Monday

Somebody who shall remain nameless is writing this blog while sucking on some frozen Coca-Cola. Oh alright, seeing as you guessed, it's me, but I'm getting ahead of the story.

Q, 5, and 9

I got into a one-sided bidding war yesterday for q.net.nz I had an auto-bid on and as the end of bidding approached I watched the other person make bids, get instantly out-bid, pause, and increase until he reached my auto-bid limit. I thought about it and placed a higher auto-bid limit and watched him slowly stagger up to that value. Single letter domain names are interesting and rare, but only a sideline for me and I'd already decided that this was my limit so I let him have it. On Saturday when I first saw that q.net.nz was coming up for auction I did a little research and discovered that 5.net.nz and 9.net.nz were unregistered, so I grabbed them on the spot. This morning I wrote a letter to the winner of last night's auction congratulating him on his win & asking if he would be interested in these domain names as well. So far I haven't heard back. If I don't get a reply I'll probably auction them off in the near future anyway, they just aren't a good match for my little hobby.

Tourist

Spent the day with Mike. He drove over late morning and we caught the bus down to Symonds street, we then went for a wander. We walked the length of K-Road, and around the corner into Ponsonby Road. I tried to think what had changed in the last 20 odd years and point it out. Not sure how good a guide I was, but he didn't complain too much and after the first hour was too busy gnawing his arm off to escape to complain. We stopped at Otto Woo's for lunch . We both opted for the teriyaki chicken and I was underwhelmed. In retrospect I should have done my homework a little better. A recent review said "Otto Woo has really gone downhill, the food used to be fresh and fabulous and now I think your local Chinese takeout could easily surpass them in portion sizes and taste." Much how I felt about the meal myself. After lunch we continued up to the top of College Hill where I showed Mike where the first Willows store had been and caught the Link bus down to Queen street, then wandered up the road a bit and had coffee, after which it was off to the Auckland City Art Gallery. I quite enjoyed the walk around there, although another patron opened an alarmed door on the first floor so we wandered downstairs and looked around the ground floor for a while, then by the time we were ready to go back up the alarm was over. The main temporary exhibition was Handboek a retrospective of Ans Westra photographs. Ans is a Dutch immigrant who has been photographing Maori events for over 40 years. After that burst of culture we wandered down Queen Street and cut up to Albert street via the spiral-staircase-alley, whatever it's name make be, having another coffee at the cafe at the base of the stairs, once there I showed Mike where the second Willows store had been ... Immediately below the window that had been my office window 10 years earlier. Then down to The Viaduct and the old Americas Cup village. NZL 40 & 41 were there, as was the biggest private motor yacht I've ever seen. Three stories above the waterline! Finally down to Britomart and the new railway station where we caught the train back to Newmarket and walked back to my place and talked some more. Total elapsed time about 8 hours. It was good having a chance to catch up and I hope Mike liked it as much as I did.

Frozen Coke

With all that walking I was a little tired & decided to have some fruit juice, so I squeezed a couple of oranges and a lemon then went to put the juice in the freezer to chill down. When I opened the freezer door I was greeted by a sticky black liquid. It seems that I'd forgotten I'd put a can of coke in there & it had decided to explode. I took the can out of the freezer & noticed it was ticking! Weird, after looking at it for a while I decided it was the gasses trying to force their way out. I tossed the can upside down in a large glass & waited for the juice to cool. The juice was nice, but I wanted something else so out with the can opener & spooned out the "Sorbet". Once mixed with a fresh can of unfrozen drink it made a passable chilled drink.