It really is happening!  I had my last day at work on Friday.  The plan was to leave at 5pm, but fate would have it that I walked out the door at 7pm to no fanfare.

But it was good!  I had a nice lunch with the team that I really like.  Rather impromtu but worked out really nice in the end.

A good thing was that leaving so late, and I was still actually doing stuff at 10pm was that I leave knowing one of my long term projects went into production and worked!  It was a nice was to leave actually. Thou to be accurate I'm not actually leaving the job, I'm just going to be doing it from a different office now.  

The apartment is a bit of a war zone now as there are cardboard box's everywhere. Tonto and I head off to the vet tomorrow for his final checks and vet certs then he flys the 31st the same day the apartment is packed up.  Rather a good result as I was not looking forward to the idea of being in the house without him. He has become very much a fixture.  

i'm off to Kyoto on Wednesday for some major time out and zening out in the gardens and temples.  Its a nice way for me to leave as I've always had a love of Kyoto and it will be good to leave from a place I've enjoyed so much.  It will set the stage correctly!

Its almost official now!  I'm leaving Japan after 4 years and 11 months, almost to the day!

My last day here will be 3rd Sept 2010.  I'm spending the last few days in one of my favourite places.  Kyoto.

Going to spend a few days there chilling down at the temples and gardens just putting everything back into place. 

Tonto flys on the 31st of Aug and I'm going to miss him alot as he has to spend 30 days in quarantine.  The paperwork to get him there is taking up half of my moving binder, but I could never leave him behind!  He know something is up as his crate has been in the apartment for a while now!

so if I don't write again, see you from the southern hemisphere!

LIttle after the fact, but I got myself an Ipad.  Had been thinking about this well before Apple actually annouced it and when they did I wanted one. I got mine via a forwarding company I use in the US and it worked really well.  Oddly I could track my Ipad via the apple store coming from China to the US to Tokyo.  Go figure that.  Wonder if I can get the airmiles for that.

So whats it like.  Well to be honest a little heavier than I expected, the whole curve back hides alot.  But I'm getting used to that.  Functionally whats its like.  Well lets start with I'm a huge internect connected person.  I don't buy news papers and get all my news from the net.  Well for thats its totally amazing!  Push, swipe  and click and I have my news of the day.  My favorite apps so far is Newswiper as it lets me read all sorts of news feeds for that.  The dedicated apps are good as well.  USA Today is nice, and WSJ is almost worth a subscription.

In other things the always on thing is great.  Want to look up something goto Wikipanion and get full wikipedia in great format.  Love that.

take notes with it, getting used to that as well.

Email, well its not doing well with my main account, but I do love the gmail access.  Bento the database, wonderful, but no PC translate, not sure on that yet.  IM, getting used to it.  But overall I do love it.  The stuff on it so far works well and I can't see where there is going to take us with media going forward.  What if really love is that it's just there.  Its a real internet applicance and its does it really well. 

When they sort out the IMAP push events for normal email accounts it will be an amazing family tool and I'd buy one for my parents in a second. (i'd have to work out the whole remote access issue, but then a 3g version could just do the trick here.)

I take my hat off to Apple here they have created a device that those of us in IT didn't think we needed as touch has failed before, but this device well its one for the rest of us.  Sure some of the setup for email may be a little tricky and there are many options on what would work best here) but overall this is a killer device.  The applications it has so far turn the internet into just a source of information that is presented to the user in an understandable way.  I can't wait to see the applications that will come out in the next few months to really take advantage of this new platform.

Look as an It professional I see that Apple are creating a walled environment for the applications, but I also have to take into account people like my parents who are starting to use the internet and having it packaged in such an accessible way can't be that bad.

d

I love lego, my nephew loves lego, and it just go ah so much cooler.

Found at Gizmodo

Gave a try to a new app today called Bento from FileMaker. It's like a mini database done well. My only complaint so far is that I can't email the information off or sync it unless I buy I Mac! Oops

Loving the iPad more and more thou. Internet made easy and very consumer able

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How so incredibly sad that it will take an ecological disaster of huge proportions to wake up the social consiousness of the right wing american public.

They have all been for drill baby drill, less government, lower taxes etc etc.

Now that the coast line of the lower southern states is in imminent danger its call out the national guard, or any government agency to come and help them.  Bobby Jindal must be in a complete meltdown now!  Suddenly he needs federal government help!

So Sarah, how you going to spin this one.  Guess the lamestream media are over reporting it all, no birds or wildlife died?  Its all a big hoax?  

oh, I have it now, big incredible democratic plot to undermine your drill baby drill thing. 

so so sad

One of the things I’ve become very much aware of is what have I actually done with my life.  I spent my first 29 years in NZ growing up, being educated and then working. I always thought I wanted to travel but certain debts didn’t really make that possible, but I listed to the stories of friends who had travelled and knew what I wanted to do.  Long story short things worked out and the funds were there for me to go and travel.

Many hardships, bad experiences, amazing times, following by stunning times, followed by some once in a life time experiences I have done what I thought I would do and can probably now swap well good stories with my old friends back in NZ.  My life over the last 11 years has been filled with many wonderful and amazing experiences.  I’ve seen and done things than many would just think way off.

I’ve seen the sunrise on Mount Sinai, trekked with the Thai hill tribes, swam in the dead sea, celebrated the Thai water festival, walked over hot coal barefoot, watched spitfires over leeds castle and seen more of life on the earth than I ever thought possilbe.  I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, and been inspired so many times.  I’m also now a two time cancer survivor and see all that has been and just hope I’ll get to see more.

This round of cancer has also given me even more insight.  I lost a few friends with the last cancer and it seems I’m lost a few more thins time.  But you know what at the end of day , those friends who stick around for it are really the ones I love to bits.

d

Well, my last visit to the hospital didn’t go quite as I was expecting.  It was supposed to be a ‘your making great healing and we don’t want to see you for another 2 or 3 months.

That did happen with my plastic surgery team who told me to keep wearing the dressing for the next two months and we will see you next month, but you also need to go back to the dermo team for the full results. We can also tell you that you have Spindle Cell Carcinoma.  Great, I’m out of here!

Not quite.  The dermo team what to run more tests!  As its Spindle Cell Carcinoma which is a tad more aggressive that its main relative squamous carcinoma they want to run another set of tests to make sure it has not spread.  So back for another contract CT scan and another wait until the results come in.  So guess what its the cancer waiting game.  I’m used to it now and spend nearly all of my time doing things that don’t let me think about it to much.  I’ve gotten fairly good at that.

Results should hopefully be all clear and come back in 2 months for a check up.  I’m just a little hesitant as all the way through this I’ve been told it can’t possible be cancer, or its such a small chance it will be cancer, and um it didn’t work out htat way.

I’ll now tell you exactly what did happen as I could say before since it freaked me out to much.  They removed 2cm of my upper lip and then did a load of re constructive surgery to replace the area taken.  I couldn’t look in a mirror to see it as I was so scared it would be bad.  Effectively they cut all the way around my nose and underneath it to move the available tissue into place.  I didn’t even realise myself how much they took until I found all the stiching inside my mouth.  The really did take all of it.  But they have done a truely stunning job of reconstruction and visually its look just like me!  There is still a scar on my upper lip and right now the area is numb as hell, but it looks great!

I was so amazed when I finally looked at it myself a number of day after all the swelling had gone down and now it just a little scar line from my lip to right nostrel,  It almost adds a little mystery to things.  The scar will decrease alot and as for the rest of what they did its all hidden.

So now its just the next step, do I sign off with a stage two cancer or does it upgrade.  As a now two time cancer patient its still all a waiting game.

Today I was searching for something an came across Michelle Malkin site again.  I’ve read her stuff a few times and always left wondering how its possible for someone to actually make money out of the vitriol and also how someone can actually belief there own words.

So anyway I have a fairly open mind so thought I’d have a quick read of her latest work.  Naturally she had to find something wrong with the jobs bill.

Her opening sentence is that even the Associated Press say the new bill won’t create many jobs.  This really got be interested so I followed the link.  Now interestingly the link didn’t go direct to the Associated Press article which is here.

Instead her blog points to this article at the Heritage Foundary, here. (I’ll also be very fair here that the Heritage Foundary does include a reference to the Associated press.

Now very interested I read the actual Associated Press article, and recommend anyone who follows Ms Malkin to read it, as it makes for some interesting observations on fact twisting and dodging, and plain old lying.

The Associated press says the the bill won’t create many jobs because alot of the bill is actually TAX CUTS.  Now what is so very very fascinating is that republicans and conservatives have been saying that job creation will only come from tax cuts.    It would seems Michelle Malkin was very obtuse about the actual real article as it actually completely contradicts what she wants to say.

Small problem thou, some of us actually do read the references!  This is very sloppy blogging, so I think I’ll wait another six months and check back to see if there is any change in factual nature of her writing.  I’m not putting any money on it.

Well its now 11 days since the surgery and the healing process has gone really well.  They took the first set of stitches out on Monday, and the second set Wednesday.  I’d had a few sneak looks at the damage during that time, but Friday was my first day without any dressings. The team at the hospital have done an amazing job and while the upper lips feels all odd and still number its looking really good.

All you can really see is a red line below my right nostril to my lip and now that the dissolving stitches are doing there thing and dissolving thing are all moving back into the right place.  Visually its looking great and you would never know that I’ve actually had quite an extensive reconstruction done.

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