Two months ago I got made redundant, so the first thing I did was cut a mohawk as in the last entry. Since then its pretty much been a big holiday. I’ve applied for a few jobs. Had an interview at Woosh for 3rd/4th level System Engineer but unfortunately my networking experience wasn’t up to it. That would have been a sweet job. Applied for a 1st level support position at AUT supporting students and staff, but they haven’t contacted me back on them so I’m still looking.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

Beach Hop: Easter Weekend

Went with Nick and Tesh and Brad and Jess to Beach Hop in Whangamata (Big hot rod show), stayed at nicks uncles and met Shelley down there as well a few other DF locals. Lots of nice cars there something like 70,000 people attended. Unfortunately we couldn’t get the classic car we were going to take going in time so it was another van mission.

Karipito Forest ride: Week before my birthday

Went with Nick and Tesh down to Wellington. Nick had a contact course to do so me and Tesh accompanied him. We stayed at Nick’s mates house in Upper Hutt. Much hilarity ensued. Bas is a fucking crack-up. Me and Tesh bought our bikes, which was a mission fitting a KX80 and a YFZ450 in one van, but we managed it, not without damaging one of the speakers in the van tho.

Ended up going riding in Karipito Forest not far from Upper Hutt with Tesh and Bas. I had my first crash. Came round a corner quite fast and couldn’t stop in time for some concrete blocks serving as a 4WD blockade. Bent my bullbars in quite badly but bike was sweet as, so kept going. Awesome riding. Very scenic with big uphills and big downhills, river crossings, we even rode up a creek at one time. It’s all rocks tho, big chunky limestones.

Wilsons Road trail ride: Weekend after my birthday
After going for a quick cane at the bike park on my birthday I went to a trail ride out in South Head that was 6k farm loop and 50k forest loop. The riding was excellent, forest enduro stuff, and most of it was sand tracks. There was even a track right out the back that I found that was just a huge long sandy straight through the long grass for ages, with little whoops every now and then. I was going full speed all the way along it.. was KICKASS!

LAN Party

Went to a LAN at my mate Jason’s, got a heap of new stuff and played Left4Dead for the first time, and loved it.

Bombing range

I been out the bombing range twice. Once with Shelley from Wilson’s road and once with Iydden from Rimmers. Both times was pretty good, hid the gas and lunch in the bushes and played around. Shelley had a bit of a hard time but it was her first time on sand so can’t blame her. Did a bit of forest riding with Iydden, got surprised by what we thought was a ranger driving down one of the forest tracks, and gapped it ask fast we could. Later we found that they were tourists as they were walking round the dunes.

Server Upgrade

Alkaif very kindly gave me his old server board and processor to use in my file server that died. I now have a nice Gigabyte board with a Athlon 64 3000+ processor and a gig of ram. I also bought a few hard drives and swapped some over with my system so now the server has 3 x 500gigs and 2 x 320gig. I’m currently have 1.1 TB of stuff shared. Probably not much compared to some people but I’m happy with it. Currently I have 3 computers in my room, with dual LCD’s setup on my computer which makes web development a whole lot easier.

Web Development

I have been working on a new site which is very close to being done. It is something I feel very strongly about and hopefully it will help other people become informed. But more on that when I launch it. Unfortunately the Telescum overhaul I was working on fell behind.

I am also currently playing with screen scrapers, spiders and web bots. I am currently scraping information from the web that I can use for at least 2 sites! But more info on that later as well.

Chopper

Went and saw Chopper live at Skycity Theatre during the comedy festival. Was absolute crackup. He was selling wristbands like the WWJD (What would Jesus Do) band you see, but they said on them HARDEN THE FUCK UP. He commented on the WWJD wristbands by saying something like “Hmmm.. what would Jesus do.. in this situation… Well surely, Jesus would just miracle himself the fuck out of there. ‘Argh I’m drowning!’ *flash of light* ‘Not anymore, hahaha!’”

Taupo trip

Went to Taupo on friday with my family to a timeshare down there. Then the next morning me and Mope went up Ruapehu to see the snow. Unfortunately all we found was ice but it looked like snow. We mucked around the moutainside, despite it being freezing as fuck up there. Altimeter said 1433m above sea level. Man I love the cold. Got back in the van, then got back out again to go for another walk.

Trail ride in Woodhill

Unfortunately I leave Taupo on Saturday to go a trail ride yesterday in Woodhill forest. It wasn’t that great. Mostly real tight forest enduro tracks but there was some open stuff where I got my speed up. I went on all the tracks even the highest difficulty. Still tricky as on a quad. Real technical steering and shit have to dodge stumps all the time. My chain fell of twice and I ripped off the plastic swingarm guard which I knew wouldn’t last 2 seconds. Overheard some guys talking and one of them said to his mate “Fuck doing that on a quad.”

And yeah, thats about it. Still looking for a place to live and still looking for jobs. Constantly being turned down for both is getting annoying as fuck though. So many people are looking for jobs. And landlords are completely age-discriminating, don’t want young people living in their houses so we’ve missed out on some real mint places.

Little bit crap cos the tracks in the bombing range are mean, but you don’t wanna get caught by the army dudes in there, or ride into a blast area. Hopefully next time I go out they won’t be bombing – and I’ll have my new set of tires on.

And cos the tide was out got to do massive 5th gear drift circles… so much fun.

Left the carpark about 10am, got back about 2pm. Good times.

A tank of gas lasted me 2.5 hours, then I filled up again with the can I bought with me, strapped to the side.

Soo much fun, can’t wait to go out with a bunch of people.

Went riding with Shelley out at the Woodhill bike park which was fucking mean except my battery was flat and we had to keep roll starting it which sucked. I rolled it though which was quite fun, going through the blue enduro tracks, straddled a stump going down an uneven little rise. Unfortunately it stalled and we had to drag it out. Thanks for helping me drag my quad around that day Shellz sorry for being a drag lol.

Then went again the next week with her and Tesh, right after and during somewhat heavy rain so there were puddles EVERYWHERE. I got fucking soaked. Quickly learnt that quads get bogged down quite easy. Tried to hit the puddles hard but almost got thrown over the handle bars to meet the bow wave that splashes back over you. Have to kick it down to second or first and give it shit. Rode some new tracks. Then got back to the van and found that my keyfob in my pants doesn’t like water. And there’s no cell reception there to get my dad to bring my spare keyfob. So Shelley had to drive me back to my house and then back to the bike park before 5pm (got there just in time) to load the quad and leave. What a doofus. Then her horn got stuck on which was pretty funny, had to pull over and rip out some arcing wires from the engine bay. Taped them up no worries.

When I used to go down the race on Nicks property I used to only be in third but now I can do it in fourth. Kick it out round the corners with my new nerf bars which allow you to put your weight right on the edge off the bike for real tight turns. The tyres are really worn now though so it gets a bit slippery and dodgey. Brad took it for a squirt and almost slid it through a fence lol.

Nerf Bars

I even started to jump it. Shelley was telling me Nick gave her a jumping lesson and she wants to do freestyle, so I’m like well if she can do it I can do it lol. Started going off this little rise at the end of Nicks race. Get about a foot or two. Pretty small its good to see how the bike handles in the air. Then nick showed me this other jump. Which is quite a bit steeper. Did it a few times but just got to get my head around the ’scariness’ of it. Nick did it on the quad and was higher than mine but it looks effortless and easy. Probly cos he’s been riding since he was 5.

Oh well pratice makes perfect (slash broken leg).

Then I went on a mean journey up to Riverhead forest. It’s mostly gravel and with the worn tyres its mean for getting sideways round corners… so much fun, so fast. Some cute girl out walking waved to me on Ireland road, and some lady tried to throw a shovel at me on Horse-shoe bush road… yeah.

I want to try Race to the Sky on it just for fun and to say I did it. But it was shut down (and it’s in Queenstown).

Fuck I love my quad.

I wake up about 6pm after my last nightshift and find a text from him asking if I wanted to go on a roadtrip the next day. I said yeah sweet and texted the people I was buying my motox boots and helmet from and told them not to post them cos I was coming down country.

So I went for a drink with Becky and B-rad up at the trig. Sitting on the back of the utes watching the sunset over the Waitoki valley drinking beer is fucking mean (if you replace beer with something tastier anyway).

Then me and Brad cruised down to Nicks to see what he was up to, and we decided to go that night instead and drive the 8 hours or so down in the dark. Since I had just come off nightshift I could drive and not fall asleep while Nick slept in the back. With my quad. We thought we’d take the quad too and stop on the way down and back for a blat.

Brad had work so he left about 9pm. “Drive safe, if you get sleepy, just pull over and buy a big bag of crack!” he said as he got in his car. Crack up… lol.

I went for a blat up the road before chucking my quad in nicks van and went home, got a few things and came back, parked my van up and we left about 10:30 pm.

Nick drove until Papakura BP (bout 2230hrs) and then we bought some supplies and dinner (for myself) and I took over. He jumped in the back and slept on some beanbags on the vanbox between my quad and the front seats.

We got to Taupo somewhere around 0230hrs and after filling up the van and bike at BP headed onto the Desert Road. There was some roadworks and we were escorted through the “three sisters” by a roadworks vehicle – to keep our speed down I suppose.

Got to the “end” of the Desert Road at about 0330hrs. Just after you go down a big hill into the valley but before you get into Waiouru. Pulled over in a big gravel pit next to the road and pulled the quad out, got geared up. Nick reckoned I would need a Swani so I put one on but it ended up being too hot.

Did a few donuts and stuff around the gravel pit, cars and trucks driving past like “WTF is that?!” then went down a track into the “army land” till we got to like, a river thing but didn’t want to cross it cos it looked quite strong. Did some donuts on some sand stuff, did a bit of exploring, then went back to the gravel pit and had turns drifting around the van, and then around each other. That thing drifts so good.

Then we loaded it back up and drove onwards. Nick went back to sleep in the back. Got into Porirua at about 8 and went and picked up my helmet, and Nick started driving. Then went to see Nicks mate in the Upper Hutt motorbike shop, hung around there for a while until the guy with the exhaust system texted nick. Said goodbye, then Nick showed me where he used to live. Went to McDonalds for breakfast and saw Nicks other mate drive past on the way there.

I climbed into the back and tried to sleep while we drove to Miramar, told Skinny we’d come see him at work at like 930… then it was 1030, then it was 11. Got to the exhaust guys house, he was at work and Nick had already paid him for the exhaust so we just loaded it into the van. But the Surf it came out of was sitting there along with the engine and gearbox already removed and sitting on the ground. Nick texted him and asked if he wanted to sell them. Got the gearbox for $100 but the engine was already sold. Loaded the gearbox in as well and went to see Skinny.

I couldn’t be fucked sleeping at this point. Got to Skinny’s work at about 1130. Showed him my quad, gave him the US Office Series and his playstation which I had borrowed. Then we left. I texted the lady who had my boots and tried to organise a pickup from New Plymouth but looking at the map it was too far out of the way.

Then she said she needed to go to Wanganui and could meet us there. We needed to go to Horopito to a vintage car parts place and Wanganui was perfect. We stopped and went for a ride at Tangimoana. Had a play on the beach and dunes. Was pretty mean. Unloading and loading the quad was a bit of a mission with all the other stuff we had loaded in the van though.

Got to Wanganui and had subway. Must have looked funny to a bunch of prissy schoolgirls in there. No sleep, barefoot, sweaty, smelly, quad in the back. Had to wait for the lady for a while but eventually she turned up at about 5 and we got the boots and took off up State Highway 4 to Horopito. The start of which is an awesome road, with some nice scenic views.

We left a little too quickly however. About 40k’s away from Ratehi the empty light came on. We forgot to gas up at Wanganui. We were eying up diggers and farm equipment wondering if we could steal a bit of diesel if we needed to, to get to the next gassy. State Highway 4 is scenic, but its a bit back country and far from anywhere *cue deliverance banjo*.

But after 20 minutes of not talking in aticipation of wondering whether we were gonna make it we pulled into the 24 hour Caltex at Ratehi at about 7pm and filled up. I jumped back in the back and tried to sleep again while Nick stopped to try get into the vintage car parts place but it was shut.

Took SH4 around the west side of the mountains, and got back on SH1 at Turangi. Stopped at Taupo for Burger King (I ate so much junk food that trip ). Then carried on. I tried to sleep again but couldn’t.

Nick was getting pretty tired driving and we pulled over at Tokoroa at about 1130pm and got some energy drink and chocolate. Gotta feed the brain with glucose to keep it awake. Then I jumped in the drivers seat so Nick decided to sleep. I jumped back on the highway and followed a B train all the way back to the Bombays. It was wierd I was falling asleep in my seat when I wasn’t driving, but I got behind the wheel after having the sugarfix and I was buzzing, focused as.

Got into Auckland about 1, but got detoured at Papakura, thought we were gonna get mugged at some lights while driving through there. Then got detoured again at Northcote. By this time I was starting to get tired but finally got back to Nicks, parked up and then I drove home in my van.

By end I had been awake for 31 hours with 1 hour sleep, Nick was more than that cos he didn’t sleep very well.

Ended up being 26 hours of straight driving with breaks of no more than an hour. What a mission!

I can scratch one of the games off my to get list. Skinny kindly got hold of Pure, the quad racing game. Is pretty mean. Makes me want to get a quad even more. I’m currently trying to save up $5-6k for a Yamaha YFZ450. Should be fun. Want to get a matching covered and alarmed trailer for my van to keep it in too lol.

Unfortunately I want to buy a guitar now, but I think I’ll just wait until after I get the quad. I been jamming with Nick a bit, he’s got a guitar and I’ve got drums but we swap most of the time. He’s pretty mean on the drums. Cranks out some wicked blast beats. I’m… below average on guitar. But I’m trying. I want to downtune it to play some real brutal chords, but I don’t think it is the right kind of guitar. I borrowed it the other day when I got off nightshift and played all day at full volume, was mean.

Been helping Nick a bit with his truck as well. He bought another Hilux. Already got a Van and a V8 Hilux (the project 88), and now he got another Hilux (for free) and is going to do that up (thats what we went to get the engine for). He’s redoing the rusty panels and stuff in it. Pretty much doing a panelbeaters job, reckons it would be about $2000 work from a professional. Brochanics all the way.

I think lately I’ve been a bit extreme on the attacking religion front. Each to their own and everyone is free to take up a religion of their choice (or not) as per the human rights. So, sorry if I offended anyone.

Also had to say goodbye to a friend today . Shit was just fucked up between us. Sad that I won’t see them again, but thats the way the cookie crumbles.