I was taken on a walk around one of our vendors’ ‘R&D’ areas today; so they could show off all the flashy things they are looking at both today and for tomorrow; whilst some of it in my personal opinion is a little bit of a pipedream at this moment in time, certainly not against the realms of reality; all technically feasible stuff only things that hold this ’stuff’ back is the world of open source and ubiquity I guess? Anyhoo….they took us to that place where all the engineers work real hard, I know for a fact it was kocher; because of the low ceilings and lack of any windows or natural daylight! Interesting stuff anyways - whilst I wasn’t given a specific none disclosure form; I am savvy enough to realise that I can’t really talk in depth about the ’stuff’ I have been privy to today. All boring stuff anyway - I don’t wanna send you all to sleep …??? (nudge -ed) dang too late!

In other news? I’m about to embark on installing Open BSD on one of my home machines. Yes UNIX not Linux….ok!! It’s all good

Well…what can I say; seems like the brass band have dominated my life this year - and the culmination of all the hard work hopefully will pay dividends in a couple of weeks, when we head up to some place near Palmerston for the regional contest. Our 4th competition in 12 months of undefeated winning!!! People have high expectation since we are the current B-Grade Australasian Champions.

so….

no pressure?!

In other news - yup!! I did it - I went low maintenance on the hair style again….it’s all gone =p Jason sooooooo owes me a week of Chinese at work

As you can see, I got bored with my theme, so I now have a bran spanking new one to accompany my latest upgrade of the wordpress backend; I always like to stay as current as possible you see ;p

Anyhoo - As promised Alan!!! Here is that photo taken waaaaaaaay back in the distant past just outside the farm. I think this was when we were around….actually I forget when exactly; but it was most certainly post primary school years.

It’s always funny when you look back at pictures so old, the main thing going through my head is…..what on earth posessed me to wear glasses like that and spike my hair when it was so long?! What a freak I was!!!

Oh Well….back to the current timeline, and not much happening other than me updating the blog a bit, although in other news, I have decided to enter a poem competition to write a Sonnet about Wellington; I’ll let you know if it gets anywhere - although I won’t be able to post it here until after the competition ‘obviously’

Right well…I’m off now; my work is done for the time being; blog ya’s later!

I spent some time as a child growing up in a small village near Southport (UK) called Banks. Where my dad worked at the then Greaves Hall Hospital; not your average institution; and a place prior to the twinkle of me where both mum and dad spent time in there nursing training years. This place was for the time I was there a psychiatric institution of some size for the region; and in it’s height the administration centre looked like this:-

I have many fond memories of my time in this place; so imagine if you will how heart-broken I am when I see the current state, of this once statley mock Tudor mansion

Now this once iconic building is as broken and desolate as the inhabitants that once upon a time people like my parent’s tried to fix….

There are simply no words to say….