Go Spain!

Although I love the Netherlands, and even though Spain beat my beloved Germany... if Spain wins the World Cup, New Zealand will be the ONLY unbeaten team.  Imagine that.

New Look Miami Heat: Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, LeBron James

I never thought it would have been possible, to see half the Eastern All-Star team on a single team.  But all basketball fans would have fantasized about this for their team no doubt.  Even I wanted to see it.  But now they are the team to beat and its looking grim for all other teams, in particular Orlando who are in the same division.

If two of them joined Chicago, the Bulls would have been immensely strong - but only one could have reach a max deal.  In Miami, it looks like they are getting 3 Franchise Superstars at the beginning of their prime.  I hope they don't get many players otherwise they are going to dominate too much and hog all the championships.

PS Check out all the hate for LeBron in Cleveland now... LOL

Looking back on my time at Olympic

I'll be starting my new job at ICE Interactive next week, but first I'd like to look back at the last chapter of my life at Olympic Software.

Prologue

I applied for a position at Olympic after being told about it by a fellow Software Engineering graduate, Wendy, who was my Part 3 Project Partner. They wanted to offer her a position but she had already found another one, and so that opened an opportunity for me. And after an interview involving "the supermarket question" I got the job!

I then worked 2 weeks over the summer developing a neat little lottery application before starting officially in January 2009. I also introduced my good friend Alex to Olympic, and so I was really excited to have a fellow classmate on board.

Day 1

My desk on my first day, you can see the beginning of the gadgets.

I went through a Helping Clients Succeed course, which is about "Peeling the Onion" and getting to the root of the problem, not just accepting what the customer is saying.

Also in my first week, Dinuka was leaving for Australia and André had already left for Europe.

BrainDump

Worked for a few months on BrainDump with Alex. There were a few late nights just chugging along with the never-ending stream of issues. Was a fun first project though!

Pedro showed up as Darth Vader. Apparently coding with the Force was quite productive.

SharePoint and OlympicCare

Started working with Stephen (the SharePoint Guru I might add) on Oly-Care, Olympic's client portal for communicating and sharing knowledge with our customers, including the support process. Went through most of what WSS 3 had to offer from setup and installation to developing web parts (mostly using the Smart part though) and administering pages and users.

Round the Bays

There was a big push to get everyone in the office ready for Round the Bays. In 2009 we had a fair turnout of around 10. But in 2010 we had a whopping 20! We went for Running Bunch twice a week, even though there weren't too many most of the time.

ITM and QV

My last projects were Projects for the above clients. Gained lots more experience in development :) Got experience with Test Driven Development, learnt some MVC.NET, some .NET forms web development, played around with JQuery, Javascript, CSS, and did some Win Forms development.

Joseph's Great Wall of Coke

Joseph drinks some 3-4 cans of coke a day, and after 3 odd years had accumulated quite a collection. He took them down to build a wall on his last day. Then proceeded to bust it down.

Final Words

I really hope that I have had some impact on the company or the team I worked with. Perhaps brought up morale when it was low, or just made people laugh when there was nothing to smile about. If nothing else, I have left my CubeeCraft guys there :D

Taiwan's Susan Boyle

Selling some work out equipment

In order to make room for my new bench press - which has a lateral pull down, I'm going to sell my previous bench press and some dumbbell weights. If anyone is interested, come visit my trade me listings.

If these don't get sold I'll consider lowering the price. If anyone is interested - and if there aren't any existing bids, I'll do mates rates for these.

Hyper Extension Bench Press with Leg Extension

20KG Dumbbells

What's your first thought of Cyclists while driving?

Beware of the Flying Fox - If you are male...

NZ Herald Article about a man who got his private part stuck in a flying fox...

Read full article here...

Its time to Invest in Stock

Well, I think so anyway.

Here's a place to get started:

FundSource.co.nz

What is a Managed Fund?

The Advantages of Managed Funds

Investing in Managed Funds for Investment Returns

Tailored Managed Fund Research Solutions

Update on My Life so far

South Island DVD
Took me way too long, but managed to get there in the end.  Sorted through hundreds of photos to turn them into slide show movie files, one file per day. Then add music and a DVD menu to turn it into a proper DVD. Looks very kiwi/amateurish but its pretty cool. I usedDVD-Styler and DVD slideshow GUI both open source apps to make the DVD.

Back to School - well work actually.
Getting back from a massive South Island
road trip has been hectic.  At work, I'm straight into with a new project kicking
off.  I'm organizing Round the Bays for the company, so that will be great
fun!  Our first running-bunch session starts tomorrow.


Fire on Cawley St
Check it out... its down the road from where I work, and I saw it!! wowzers it was
big

Church @ Salvation Army I've attended once this past month and a bit, as
I haven't been in Auckland on Sundays much.  I did however visit their new
website... nice!

Decommissioning my beloved basketball hoop
Its lasted some 3-odd years, but the rust has made it dangerously unstable.  Not too sure what i'm going
to do with it, whether I'll buy another one or make my own...

Braces: 12 months and counting
 Its been 1 year since I first got my braces.  It was thought that we could get them off in 9 months and then use the retainers.  But its taking a bit longer than expected and I'm not enjoying it one bit.

Orlando is not doing as well as expected.  The team is too muddled by new players and chemistry despite having one of the best teams on paper.  Their last loss to the Lakers was particularly bad after falling behind in the 1st half, crushing the Lakers in the 3rd quarter and collapsing in the 4th.  The Lakers are on a roll despite Kobe's injuries.  LeBron has the Cavs right up there despite Shaq getting in the way.

How to Survive the Credit Crunch

Heres a very good article I found over at MSN Money:

http://money.msn.co.nz/money-expert/?blogentryid=415852&showcomments=true

Money Expert

Crunchonomics: 12 things to do to survive the crunch
21/05/2009 5:17:00 PM, Diana Clement

The credit crunch is set to get a whole lot worse. Or so say economists who predict unemployment is going to rise from 4.8 to 8 percent.

Ouch! That's scary. Anyone's neck could be on the block. But there are ways to survive the crunch with your savings intact.

1. Make yourself invaluable at work. Who would you fire if you needed to cut costs? Would it be the person you can't do without or the one who whinges about change?

2. Build up a rainy-day fund. Three months' living costs give you breathing time to find another job.

3. Add a string to your bow. That means acquiring additional qualifications or experience. Depending on your line of work, you may need to study part-time or you may be able to shadow someone at work to expand your skills. You'll impress your employer and make yourself more employable.

4. Overpay your mortgage or personal loans. This will allow you to take a payment holiday if you lose your job. It's nice to be three months ahead on payments if you can manage it. You'll pay less interest. But do check the fine print to see if this is allowed.

5. Cut out non-essentials one at a time. It's hard to go from spendthrift to tightwad. If you budget, you can cut down excesses slowly.

6. Review expenditure that can get out of hand like grocery buying, power and phone bills. Shopping around can save a lot of money. So, too, can taking simple steps to reduce power and water consumption. You can also quit the gym and re-engineer your wardrobe to make more use of what you already own. Using the Internet is a great way to cut down on costs. You can compare prices and shop for bargains. But beware of buying stuff you don't need on sites like TradeMe. Even better, become a seller.

7. Socialise for less. Hire a DVD and watch it at home with friends, have a pot-luck dinner, make one drink last all evening, meet after dinner for dessert to save on restaurant meals, or go to galleries and free exhibitions. There are endless ways to have a good time and enjoy the free things in life.

8. If you can't get ahead financially, get help from a budget advisor. It's free. The Americans call a budget a "spending plan". And if you think of it that way it's much easier to stomach. This will help you plan what spending is essential and what you can ditch.

9. Earn more. Negotiate a pay rise, get a part-time job or set up a business on the side. Even if you work one night a week in a bar or restaurant, the money will soon add up. If you're smart you can even convince yourself that the work equates to a night out.

10. Be smart with your credit cards. If you always pay off your credit cards on time, you get interest-free credit for up to a month.

11. Rent out a spare room. These days people want more rooms than they have members of the family. If you have a spare room, find another flatmate. Foreign students sometimes pay as much as $250 a week for a room and food.

12. If you're into the property market up to your neck, sell off your least-profitable properties before the bank comes knocking. You can always start again.

Update on Recession and Redundancy

A few weeks ago, I blogged about my company making cuts. The entire week after the announcement was made, the entire team's productivity and morale hit rock bottom. The big wednesday (a reference to the recent Lotto Jackpot) was preceded by a Tuesday outing where we all took a half day to do one last big social thing together. We had lunch in New Market at this Spanish (I think) place offering $10 lunch specials which was completely funded by the Snack Box (Cheers Stephen!!). Then we were off to Panmure for some 10 pin bowling. And next we went off to watch a movie: Ice Age 3. And finally to top it all off, drinks at Garrisons. Where all events were paid for by our awesome team leaders Simon and Jacqui!

Anyway. Big Wednesday came and our team of 16 was cut by 5. Including me... sort of. I offered to work part-time including working some extra days for free. Why did I do it? Many reasons, I think Olympic Software is a great place to work with an fantastic team in ASD. The actual work I do is very satisfying (most of the time anyway). The office is just a 10 minute run away, and the hours are very flexible. But ultimately, I want to serve people. In my previous blog entry, I asked what Jesus would do. After some thought, I think he would be serving people wherever he could. He would probably have been struggle financially too, and would need to be giving to others from what he had, not out of his abundance but out of love for fellow man. And thats what I'm striving to follow too.

So with that, my 3 days a week starts today! What will I be doing in my spare time? I was made the unofficial official social coordinator for my team, so I will need to plan events, and ideas to boost morale. Then theres volunteer opportunities available from Habitat for Humanity and Salvation Army that I have long been intrigued by. And then theres sharpening my programming skills, maybe learning some SharePoint, or looking through MCPD books, or even FireFox development... Then theres my excersise, my running, my basketball. But Most of All, I want to look at my time off as a kind of Sabbath. In the Bible, God ordered people to rest from work, which is for our own good. What do we do on a Sabbath? Build our relationships! With God, with our family, and with our friends. So if you haven't seen me in a while and want to catch up, I would love to meet up, drop me a line!!

Are you switching to 2Degrees?

2Degrees just launched and it seems like the latest buzz. Everyone is itching to switch because everyone hates Vodafone and Telecom. I mean, who likes networks that charge exhorbant prices and forces you to stay with all these switching costs?

2Degrees' pricing is half of that of Vodafone and Telecom, and it has very good deals for prepaid customers topping up giving them an extra 100 free txt messages for a $20 top up, plus 50 for every $10 after that.

I think however most consumers will wait to see what Vodafone and Telecom does before making a switch. I was very tempted to switch but after quickly calculating the costs, Vodafone still provides the cheaper alternative with their TXT2000 and BestMate offers. 2 Degrees have started off at taking all the low-volume consumers who spend less than $20-$30 per month.

If nothing else, prices are sure to drop and service should improve in a market where consumers have been bullied for years. Are you switching?

Recession and Redundancy

When will this recession end? A few months ago, it seemed to have hit the bottom, but now it seems to have stayed there. Sure there have been reports that we were on the rise, with a few reports that house prices and sales were picking up. But I think many of those were red hearings where sellers were finally reluctanly agreeing to a lowered price which met with the increased demand from buyers thinking they would get a bargain.

And several months on from when my company decided to go to a 4 day working week, the boss announced that the company has reached a critical state. He was quoted as saying "The past few months were spent trying to save jobs but now we need to save the company". Basically 15 cuts across the company need to be made and my department had been the most unprofitable. So how can an employee who loves his job help the company? I understand my boss' situation, if we don't make cuts the whole company will go down, and he's been trying his hardest to keep jobs for the past 4 months.

How has your company reacted in these economically troubling times? What ideas have you got for cutting costs and raising revenue?

Another interesting thought crossed my mind... If Jesus was in my situation, what would he do? There is very little written in the Bible of His time spent as a carpenter, but I wonder whether He encountered a recession? Did He need to work longer hours and find creative ways to earn an income? Was He as anxious as us worrying about where His next meal will come from?

My take: Today

RIP Michael Jackson! boy did I love his music in the 90s. And despite all the bad that has happened to him over the last 10 years, his death rectifies it all. He is no longer Jacko, the crazed man hanging a baby out the window. He is no longer Michael, a flawed man with child-like dreams of neverland. He becomes Michael Jackson, the icon, and that will surpass who he really was.

In other news, Charlie's Angels' Farrah Fawcett dies from cancer. Since I never really knew her, my generation will know her as "the other celebrity to also die"

What a jackpot in Big Ticket Wednesday, the biggest lottery in NZ history at $36m. You know lotto isn't statiscally random when less than 1 in 15 winners come from Auckland (since it should be 1 in 4 or something closer to that). I still think gambling is bad, but thats shapped from my personal values rather than from being a Christian. I have heard many Christians say that gambling is bad but have not investigated this since it hardly affects me. But it could be a worthwhile study to see what the Bible has to say about it.

Air Canada lands in Orlando! The Magic trade Vince Carter for Rafer Alston, Courtney Lee, Tony Battie. The trade gives the Magic yet another All-Star (4 after Howard, Nelson, Lewis) and a goto guy when the game is on the line, a key piece missing from last season. They however lose the young Lee who showed signs of great potential and could be a great player in a few years, but I guess the Magic are in WIN NOW mode. They may also lose Turk, who has been an outstanding and consistent clutch player. The Cav's also traded for Shaq, Spurs for Richard Jefferson. This is going to be some of the most talented and competitive teams going at it for a championship in recent history.

I'm getting new broadband internet after being fustrated at Slingshot's increasingly slowing speeds. Its becoming difficult just to load a web page let alone checking emails or internet banking. Telecom seems to have the best deal at the moment at 20Gb ADSL2+ at $59 a month which is just $20 over the basic package. Woohoo! more on this later :)

The economy is still not showing signs of recovery, it is however stabilizing at a low point. I hope for the people's sake that things pick up and people who are financially in difficult times are assisted. But ultimately God has things under control, and its far more important that we have a moral recovery than an economic one. A quick scan of the news indicates some crazy and sick people out there.