Some recent pics

These are some recent pics of Larissa with her cousins, me bathing her in Whangarei and Katya the punk!

Hmmm... Bacon

It is good to have some fun!

An exciting morning

So... Pete has required me to make a post on our exciting morning.

We decided to go to Porirua via the toy library. As we were coming up the Ngaraunga Gorge our ever reliable Toyota completely died. I was in the far right lane so had some quick work to get myself off the left hand side.

All the electrics were working so it was something fuel related.

I got Claire and Katya off the motoway and gave Pete a call to give us a tow. However the place is covered in cameras so the boys in blue (and floro green) turned up. I suppose it is quite exciting to be towed by the cops.

Anyway... looks like a new fuel pump is needed. Not so impressed that a 137km Toyota needs a new fuel pump. Then again it probably reflects the quality of petrol we have in NZ. Interestingly Claire had just filled up at Shell with the tank very empty.

Sneaky, anti-parent Air NZ

Last night I booked a whole pile of tickets to Whangarei on Air NZ (only option to Whangarei).

I found that if I booked an adult fare by itself it was $143 (one way). If I booked the same adult fare with a child the fare went up ($166 for the adult + $107 for the kid). If I backed out and booked the same fare without the kid, the price went back to $143.

So basically you get stung by Air NZ for an extra 16% if you are a parent. And as for any discount for kids... well that is just an illusion as they kick you through the adult fare.

NICE ONE AIR NZ!!! Way to show those true family friendly values we hold as New Zealanders.

Actually...

Actually the hardest thing I have had to do in my life is come back home... without Larissa. It is truly devastating.

It has been a difficult few days up north made bearable by a depth of relationship and communication with Rob and Mandy and Bruce and Doreen that is just incredible. We have laughed and cried. Talked and prayed.

Larissa is in good hands while we work on getting Claire well again.

Big Change

Today I took Larissa to live with her Aunt. It has become too dangerous for her to be around Claire. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

Claire is not improving at the moment. We are trying a new medicine and counselling regime. Hopefully this will help.

iPhone Tethering

I'm heading off to CHCH in a few weeks and in the past I have taken my work's T-stick Telecom modem. However with my new 3Gb of data from Vodafone and the iPhone's ability to tether, I have been trying it out.

The instructions say to turn on the tethering function on the iPhone, plug in the USB cable between the iPhone and the computer, select the iPhone as the network device and away you go.

It didn't quite work like that. The device was not present at first. Then when it was it wasn't called iPhone.

However once I sorted that out, it worked sweet as. I might even try doing the connection between the laptop and the iPhone through Bluetooth but I thought that was too much to ask straight up.

Still... pretty smooth and works a treat.

New Vodafone promotional plan awesome

Vodafone have lifted my iPhone plan from 250Mb of data to 3G (12x increase) and 100 MMS to 1000MMS (10x increase).

This makes the iPhone packages internationally competitive and very very cool.

Big thumbs up for Vodafone. Big thumbs up for a bit of competition (re: Telecom and particularly 2degrees).

A few new Larissa photos

iPhone

Ok. It is about time I formally comment on my new iPhone.

I have now had an iPhone for about 6 weeks. My old phone died and I just couldn't bring myself to buy anything less.

So I sold my iPOD Touch, sold the insurance replacement phone and stumped up my $499 for the cheapest 8G iPhone 3G on the cheapest plan.

After 6 weeks I have one word to describe it... AWESOME!!!

What it can do is just brilliant. I have all my e-mail come to it. I can check 1-day instantly on it. I use it to watch huge numbers of sermons. The browser is great. My Exchange account and diary at work just connects. It is fantastic.

I have only a couple of issues.

1. The camera res is a bit low. This has been addressed with the 3GS

2. It can be a bit slow sometimes. Not really a problem but might be nice if it was quicker. Again, addressed by the 3GS.

That's it. It really is that good.

Because I have wifi wherever I tend to be I barely use the 3G Vodafone allowance. Think I used about 70Mb out of the 250Mb allowance per month.

So if you are thinking... don't. Just get one. They are soooooo much better than the Blackberry.

Quick Update

Both the kids are asleep so it it is time for a quick update.

• Larissa is growing and growing. We have had to move her out of a capsule and into a backwards facing car set. She is grabbing and cooing. We never had the cooing with Katya.
• Katya went to Kindergarten this last week for her induction. She starts next term (two weeks time). We had a discussion with our deaf adviser and the Kindy head teacher. It looks like we will get some really good support for the Kindy as they work with Katya. Katya's verbal cognitive skills are rapidly growing. Her speech skills are just starting to develop. Kindy will be great for this.
• Claire continues to be very unwell. We have a meeting this Tues with a more experienced consultant shrink to get a second opinion. Hopefully this will give us a better plan pushing forward as to-date things have not worked. We face some significant adjustments to our family's life with this over the next few months, particularly if we don't make any traction on Tuesday.
• As for me... I'm just tied. My work has been amazingly tolerant. That said, what has been achieved over the last 12months has been pretty cool at work. As I have said to my work colleagues... this is the first place I have ever worked where there are no weak links, the environment is great and basically we are just humming. We have one more big event this year and then it is set up for next year.

So that is us in a nut shell.

A really cool CI site

This is the best site to get a demo of how a CI sounds with the various numbers of electrodes. You need to remember you have 40,000 electrodes (or cochlear hairs). Katya has 22! However the brain is an amazing creation and it adjusts to work with the implant. In addition, more sophisticated software in the processors are helping to extract even better performance out of the same hardware.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1205/features/Interactive/intro1.htm