Larissa likes lying face forward

This was a failed attempt to do mobile picture blogging from my iPhone. Need to do some more work it seems.

New floors

This is our new flooring. I am posting this direct from my iPhone.

Testing BlogwriterLite from my iPhone

This is a test to see how good Blogwriter is from my iPhone. Seem the business.

Some consumer issues...

I have recently had a bit of a run of consumer issues. I thought I would jot them down so people who might be in similar situations might know they are not the only ones.

A new iPhone
I have splashed out and bought a new iPhone. My 6 year old Nokia finally died after the key pad snapped off it. The iPhone is just awesome. It easily connects to both my personal GMAIL accounts and my work Exchange server. The apps are so cool and the camera is not bad. Facebook is just seamless. I have my iPhone on Vodafone. It is pretty good. One interesting thing is that after two weeks I have only used 17.2Mb+3.5Mb (ie 20.7Mb) of data despite not really holding back. The $40 Vodafone plan has 250Mb per month in it so I should be fine. I am surprised to see in my current balance however that I only have 183Mb left. It may be that Vodafone have pro-rated the allowance for the part month. It will be something to watch as the iPhone gives accurate data usage and I wouldn't put it past a telco to diddle people on a bit of data counting. That said Vodafone have always treated me well so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and wait for my invoice to see what's up.

I have been asking our Telecom account manager at work about and iPhone for the boss. She has a Blackberry and after over 6 months of trying I have given up trying to make it work with our Exchange server. Telecom (bless their socks) can't promise anything but they do want to point out that there network is faster than Vodafone's. Hopefully most people are bright enough to realise that any network with no one on it will be ridiculously fast compared to a network that has 50%+ of all cell phone users on it and using it every day. When Telecom move their customer base onto their network, let's then see what their real world speeds are like.

Interestingly one of the phones Telecom were offering us was the Nokia E35 (think that is what it is called). It is the iPhone competitor. Nokia just launched their Apps store and it has crashed and basically the reviews suck. Apple have recently sold their billionth application. Bit of a difference.

New carpet
We have had new carpet installed through Carpet One. The price was excellent and the quality of the carpet is top notch. The installation process has been an absolute nightmare. We have still to have the carpet fully installed and to a quality level I am happy with. The techniques used are cheap and will show in the long term. I would probably recommend Carpet One BUT I would be very specific about how I wanted the carpet laid.

Births, Deaths and Marriages
With Larissa's birth we obviously registered her birth and got confirmation of her registration. Then we got a letter "reminding" us that it was against the law not to register a new baby. Apparently the hospital had sent two notifications. And apparently Births, Deaths and Marriages don't have even the most rudimentary duplicate checking procedures and programs in their system. And they said they would get back to me in 5 days and didn't. It was amazing how quickly they got back to me when I forwarded my correspondence to the Minister's office. If government departments are going to wag the big stick of the law at Joe Citizen, they should at least have the decency to make sure they are right in doing so.

Lots of toys

We got given a pile of toys to sell to help pay for Katya's CI operation.

Check out Trade Me

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=889940

Bit of an update

We have had a real struggle the last few weeks with PND. Claire is now back home and a lot more together. We have been very fortunate that my mother has been able to take time off work and support us.

Larissa is growing really well and is sleeping well at night. Today we had a hearing test on her which was positive and the audiologist says we have no worries. This is quite a relief.

Katya has been pressing forward in leaps and bounds. She has really enjoyed having her cousin who is a similar age staying. She has said no and is understanding a lot of what we are saying. We have had one processor adjusted in our last trip. We are not sure whether the adjustment is ok... she has been a bit inclined to remove the adjusted processor. We are making an effort to encourage her to adjust to it as we know it will be very close to being right.

The house is coming together. The top is all but finished with some flooring to come in over the next few weeks. Downstairs still needs a bit of painting.

I think our trials, which are still ongoing, are growing us. One day I would like to know why all this PND etc hit us. I do know it has made us more aware of the challenges that face many people in our society with mental illness. We are grateful we can wrestle these challenges in God's strength and rest in Him when we are overwhelmed.

Store room sorted

Some of the guys from church came around and sorted my store room out for me. Absolutely awesome.

Finished Lights

Some new Larissa pics

Larissa is growing really well. She is piling on in excess of 50gms a day which is great. She has yet to settle into a sleep pattern but then again she is only 3 weeks old.

Claire is getting better. There is still a long road ahead of us but there is now hope.

We have been very fortunate that my mother has come back down and supported us in a real practical sense.

The electrics

We are in the final stages of building. This is 2/3rds of what we demolished out of the house.

Mark came around and finished off the electrics. We now have lights.
These are magnets on the wall that were meant to hold the lights in like this...
HOWEVER... the glue had not set properly (even with 24hours) and they started to fall down. SO they now look like this...
I will post a photo of the completed lights, with glue solidified, when the painting is finished.