Year: 2008

Garden of Eden, Er, ‘Ōla‘a

Like many of our friends and neighbors, we’ve begun to do a bit of vegetable gardening to lessen the strain of our ever-increasing food costs. I had attempted to do some square foot gardening a few years ago, but never really got off the ground with it. It now is more of a necessity than a luxury, I dusted off the tools and started the effort all over again. All of the veggies started off with seeds planted and kept on our l?nai. I had a pair of 2′ x 3′ plastic tubs that I had bought for my previous…

12 Wasted Hours

view original Originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk Today was a state holiday in Hawai‘i, but I was in the office trying to upgrade Leok?, our FirstClass server, along with our other techie. Everything seemed to go fine, took four hours or so to back up the post office (where all user and conference data is stored) and migrate it to a new Mac Pro. There we discovered that the administrator account was borked. After a few hours on the phone with a consultant we use on the mainland, we decided to go back to our backup of the system and…

Curbing The Clutter

view original Originally uploaded by lylamerle I thought we did a really good job of cleaning house and getting rid of a lot of things that we’d likely never use again before taking off for Aotearoa in January. We sold a lot of things in a garage sale, some went to the Salvation Army, and anything left over was taken to the dump. Our perspective on clutter changed a bit after our experience in New Zealand. We only brought those things that we felt we needed to survive, and likewise we bought few things that would need to be sold…

No iPhone For Keola

While it seemed half of the civilized words was standing in line in order to purchase a new iPhone yesterday, we opted for a much less expensive albeit less technologically advanced option. Kenneth uses and highly recommended MobiPCS. I investigated their plans and for less money than one iPhone all-you-can-eat voice and text plan, we now have three lines – one for my wife, my daughter and myself. We have unlimited local and national calls and unlimited texts within the US. We got the Motorola E815’s for myself and my wife (at left), and a Motorola Razr for M?lia. The…

The End of Toto

view original Originally uploaded by LittleO2 I was saddened to hear that Steve Lukather officially disbanded the group Toto last month. They were on my list of acts that I hoped to see at some point. Luke explains the reasoning behind the end of the group pretty clearly. Toto was him, the Porcaro Brothers and David Paich. Singers and other band members came and went. Steve was the last man standing, and it must have been tough going out on tour without any of the other original band members. Toto was ripped to shreds by critics in their day for…

Hawai‘i, Sweet Home

view original Originally uploaded by keoladonaghy My wife, daughter and I began our sojourn last week Saturday. From Dunedin we flew to Auckland for a connecting flight to Sydney, Australia. Our baggage was considerably overweight, and Air New Zealand happily reduced my checking account by $200 for the privilege of getting all of our things home. It was an omen of more bad things to come. We were also informed that they could not transfer our bags to Qantas for the flight to Sydney – we would have to pick up all 6 bags, haul them to the International terminal,…

Goodbye, Dunedin

Things were quite hectic during our last week in Dunedin. We needed to vacate our flat last Monday and move into a motel for the last few days. Though the Accommodations office had tried to get us a bit more time, they needed to prep the unit for the next tenants so we packed up and moved a few blocks to the Cable Court Motel on Cumberland avenue. It was a very comfortable place with a very nice couple who managed it. We will miss our little flat (at left; we had the left half of the house. While I’ve…

Going To The US Sucks?

Bernie Tweeted a link to this story about some poor soul who found out he was going to be fingerprinted and photographed upon entering the U.S for a software developer’s conference. Here’s a quote: I want to give a clear signal to the US members of the Drupal community: this is unacceptable and hinders development and business. I’m sure the U.S. Department of Commerce, Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security are quivering with fear about Drupal developers mobilizing to protest this horrific injustice. Another quote: …it’s the last time I’ll be going into the United States while…

Magma from Dunedin

view original Originally uploaded by Irish Typepad Bernie Goldbach found this piece of polished magma from Dunedin while visiting Edinburgh, Scotland. He says it reminded him of me. Other than the strong Irish chin I don’t see the resemblance. 😉 There are stong historic ties between Edinburgh and Dunedin. Dunedin’s name comes from the original Scottish-Gaelic for Edinbugh – Dùn Èideann. I’m sure the plaque at the base of this masterpiece documents some aspect of it. We have one full week left in our flat, and four days in a local motel as the accommodations office was not able to…

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