The Frog

The frog is no more.  I hadn't seen it for a day or two and was wondering if it had succumbed to either the chlorine or my cleaning actions.  Today I found it when emptying out the leaf catcher in the pump. There it was, feet caught in the mesh and body pressed up against it.  Obviously it had been caught in the flow to the outlet at the bottom of the pool and was unable to swim against the tide.

A sad but inevitable end.

Yesterday morning I was awoken by an odd sounding bird.  It had what could only be described as a very frog like sound.  It went on for hours. 

Eventually Camille and I arose and did our usual morning things before going for a wander around our property.  To our surprise we found the below swimming around in our swimming pool which I had heavily chlorinated the previous day.  It's body is about 6 centimetres in length  - is this a good size for a New Zealand frog? 

We pulled it out of the pool and gave it it's own unchlorinated rainwater pool with a rock to sit on a good thirty feet away from the pool behind a wall.  About half an hour later it was back in the pool.  All that chlorine can't be good for it but it seemed to be fairly happy  - and quite vocal about it too.

Maybe I let the pool get away on us a bit over winter.

Lifts and Stairs

There are only two working lifts in this hotel.  The other(s) are out of action.   This makes for a lot of waiting around for a lift to arrive and, occasionally, when travelling down you can find yourself unexpectedly heading back up again.

I had to get something from our room earlier and waited and waited and waited for a lift but decided in the end that it would be quicker and easier to use the stairs.   This proved not to be the case.  On entering the stairwell I discovered, much to my surprise, that I could only travel downwards.  The up door was locked and the door I had just came through turned out to be a one way door only.  So down I went and found myself in a strange part of the building with no way to get back to the hotel area.  In fact, I had to exit the building, walk down the street, around the corner and back in via the main entrance.

This is obviously a security precaution to prevent stair-dancers but it is bloody inconvenient when the lifts aren't all functioning as they should.

Wellington

There are few things more ineffectual in life than cleaning one's teeth manually with an electric toothbrush.  Somewhere between home and the hotel it had somehow managed to turn itself on and drain the battery.  Let's hope that this is not an indication of how the day is going to be.

When we arrived here yesterday I had to shoot off to see some people while Camille booked in.  Apparently our room wasn't ready and they were to call her when it was.  Unfortunately nobody informed me of this and when I arrived back at the hotel some hours later and headed to reception to pick up my keycard I succeeded in changing our room from a superior suite to a standard suite at an extra cost of $100 per day.  Don't ask me how I did this but I will say I won't be taking advice on hotels from Camille's brother any time soon.

I went up to the room that had been assigned to me and lay around in it thinking, "Well this is a pretty crap upgrade" until Camille arrived back to sort everything out. I don't know where I would be with out her. However, I am  with her and we are in the room we should be in.   Relief all round.

Off to Wellington

Camille and I are off to Wellington today.  One of our clients is having their annual conference at the Intercontinental Hotel which I have to say looks quite good.  Here's hoping it lives up to its looks.  While we are there I will endeavour not to

Lock my self out of the hotel room

Get locked inside the hotel room

Get stuck in one of the lifts or almost stuck in one of the lifts.

It's pissing down with rain so its likely to be a long, slow trip.  The car is already loaded up with conference bound boxes and other bits and pieces and everything else is basically packed and ready to go.  Just need to add the two laptops, two netbooks and the data projector and we should be able to swan off around 8:00am.

Microsoft patches and IE8

I have been providing some of my users with new computers recently.  Yesterday I belatedly realised that they had all gone out with Internet Explorer (IE) version 7 installed instead if IE8.  This is because of Microsoft's automated patch software, WSUS,  happily applied XP SP3 before doing the upgrade to IE8.

When I tried to manually install IE8 I was informed that I had to install another patch first.  However, I couldn't install the patch as the install process informed me that there was no need to install it as SP3 was installed.  The only solution I can find is to

1. Uninstall XP SP3.
2. Install the patch manually.
3. Run the IE8 upgrade manually.
4. Re-install XP SP3.
5. Re-install any other required patches.
6. Check that everything is working as it should.

How absolutely bloody painful this is going to be.