Righto then. This has been an interesting year. It started with us being bought by Quest, and has basicly gone by at around 100 mph from there. I’ve had two trips to LA (well Orange County), one to St Petersburg (which was fun) and one all over the US. I’ve gone from Jade (ie, nothing) to Gold airpoints in under 12 months :)
Now, I need to do some more to use the “status” :)
As usual, Leonie and I didn’t manage to celebrate out wedding anniversary. I was in LA this year, and last year we were literally driving down the country in a large truck. We did manage to get away in the middle of the year, to a spot on the east coast which we will be going back to. We have plans for this year tho – Varekai in Auckland – so it’s looking good for the 5th anniversary.
On the techo front, it’s been a VERY quiet one for me – to the point where I’m scraping for things to put on my MVP “things I’ve done this year” list. Mostly, it’s been head down, backside up. Next year looks interesting, with a move (finally) to .NET 2.0 (well, 3.0….) at work, which will get us into the, um, 2005′s :) From a toy point of view, more stuff left than came in (media center, two “spare” pc’s, tv, video, cable tv). We did get an Apple Airport Express (fantastic, highly recommended) and I got a new phone (i-mate SP5) which is all good. I did get to teched (just – sold out 2 hours after I paid!!), and it was quite a good one.
Juha has a good round up of all things tech and kiwi. He may want to change the AfterMail URL tho :) (it’s .com, tho it redirects to Quest anyway)
It’s been a year of downsizing, too, this year. We bought a house in February, and proceeded to compress a large 3 bedroom house into a small 2 bedroom house. It’s getting less cluttered, but slowly. Getting rid of the TV was an interesting exercise, and not something I want back (the tv, that is). We listen to a lot more music now (yay iTunes store, too!), hang out more, and when we do watch tv shows, it’s either on the laptop (think 15″ HDTV) or the projector (2m x 2m HDTV). Without ads. In HD.
Both of us managed to ride 80k’s around half of lake taupo (well, half each), which was a good achievement, tho it would have been nice (tho VERY painful) to do it all. Maybe next time. Training for that basicly killed everything from August thru early December.
Anyway, we are off for the second part of the annual “get the hell out of the city” trek. The first part was up Ruapehu for Christmas. The second part is down to Phat 07, then a week or 2 around the top of the south island. Lovely. Photo’s in the usual 2 places. Leonie has a list of things she’s grateful for.
