Posts relating to New Zealand.
Above: Flowers at the Islamic Centre in Kilbirnie, Wellington on Monday. On 9-11, I wrote an editorial in Lucire immediately. It was clear to me what I needed to write, and the editorial got quite a few readers at the time. Today is March 20, five days after a terrorist attack on our country, […]
Read More… from In the wake of terrorism in your own country
I rented a couple of trucks over the last few days, and I’m surprised that automatics have taken such a hold in this country. I’ve written about my preference for manuals elsewhere, and for a regular car, I would consider one with a sequential gearbox. We’re in an era now where the advantages of […]
Read More… from After driving automatic and manual trucks, the manual still wins for me
I never planned to spend quite this much on computers in the first two months of the year. The laptop was in dire need of an upgrade, so I had budgeted for it. After getting it, I was impressed, but thought that the desktop PC, which dates from 2012 and upgraded with a Crucial […]
Over the weekend, I noticed Autocade’s page-view stat had ticked over the 15,000,000 mark. In fact, it was at 15,045,000, and I estimate that it hit the milestone around February 6—fitting for it to have taken place as the (lunar) year began. With how busy things have been, Autocade has been updated less, but […]
Read More… from Autocade passes 15 million page views, as SUVs and EVs take hold
I’ve had a great week with my new laptop, though it exhibits some of the same traits I’ve frequently seen with Windows 10: settings’ windows vanishing when attempting to load. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, demo PCs I’ve seen at the store have terrible reliability history scores, and mine is no exception. It […]
Read More… from How to get a perfect 10 in reliability on Windows 10
Top: The new laptop, just unboxed. Centre: Publicity shots at strange angles. Above: The specs, as told by Windows. When I think about it, I’ve gone through quite a lot of laptops over the years. The first this century (as there was an Apple II-compatible that I used for some months in the 1980s, […]
Read More… from The Asus FX504 is far better than reviewers think
On this Pope Gregory Arbitrary Calendar Start Day, I wrote to a contact of mine at Renault New Zealand. In mid-2018, I joked that, since Renault had no dealers in Wellington (never mind what’s listed on their website—the only people who can see a dealer there are psychic mediums), I could sell them out […]
Read More… from Capturing a buyer: some advice to Renault New Zealand
You’d think that after the Bupa nurse said Dad’s dentures were found, that would be the end of it. I headed there this afternoon to discover that they only found his upper set. The lower ones are missing. Again, no one there thought of putting him on soft or purée food till my […]
Read More… from They only found one set of dentures, so how’s my Dad supposed to eat these solids?
Above: Dad and I wait for his psychogeriatric ‘re-evaluation’ on November 30, or, treading a path of bullshit. Even in the rest home, Dad remained very protective of the other residents, so much so that there was an incident involving a day care resident in late November that saw the home insist that he be […]
Read More… from A chain of events that led to my Dad being effectively starved today
Above: If phones were sentient beings, it probably is a bit mean to have the old phone take a photo of its successor. After a drop to the ground (and by that I mean the hard floor at the local Pak ’n’ Save) produced lines on the screen of my old Meizu M2 Note, I […]