Sunday, October 10, 2010

Updated website

As you all should know I have for many years operated a consultancy. Even if this is at the moment "on hold" due to my work I still intend to keep it operational. Part of that is to keep a website going. I have, after much experimenting with different solutions, totally revamped the Orion Consulting website:

www.orionweb.info

I am now using the Drupal open source Content Management System as "backend". More info on that you can find at Drupal

A more famous site using the same system: White House...

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

The towing experience

As I said in the earlier post - our car died some 30 km from Mana Pools camping site. We were towed in to camp by another friendly gamecounter.

Going back our friends André and Chris towed us to the entrance gate, some 50 km. As the towing band we used had snapped 4 times and the remaining 35 km to the main road is much worse than the part we had managed we had to leave it there.

Back in Harare we pondered various options. In kilometres the distance is not extremely far, about 430 km or so. But those 35 km on really bad dirt road is the problem. To bring a mechanic from Karoi (some 110 km or so from the car) was one option but what if he could not fix it on site? Felt like it was better to get it to Harare and THEN fix it.

We started asking around and Mia found some guys who offered to do the job. So we made arrangements.

Well, after nearly 3 weeks of constant coughing I had visited my doctor who put me on my second cure of antibiotics. The next morning I cough so bad something snaps in my right side, a rib or a muscle or whatever. Painful is the word.

Off to Emergency Rooms and x-ray. Early stages of pneumonia, injections of painkiller and antibiotics and prescription of more antibiotics plus antiinflammatory. So no way I can travel.

Friday morning Mia took off with 2 guys in a small truck with a towing bar. They hit the turnoff at around 4.30 pm. It took them 2 hours just to drive those 35 km to gate 2.... the small truck damn near danced off the road if they travelled at any decent speed due to weight imbalance.

It took them 3 hours to then get back to the main road... as the towing bar kept vibrating lose and fall off. So by 10 pm they were back on tar. Got to Karoi and our bull-bar fell off and split as they had used that to secure the tow-bar... They left Karoi around 1-2 am.

Then the Isuzu damn near pushed them off road downhill when the guy in our car lost control. They knifejacked and nearly went offroad down a cliff.

They were back in Harare around 8.30 am... roughly 24 hours. And Mia was so exhausted she damn near cried when I picked her up. The guys literally said "never call us again if you have problems". Did I mention they encountered hyenas on the dirt road in the dark when they had to stop to fix the towing bar and the guys were scared shit?

=-=-=-=-=
Powered by Blogilo

Monday, October 04, 2010

Mana Pools 2010

Here a link to Mana Pools 2010 annual Game count

The count was brilliant with the "small" exception that our car died on the way in to the camp... and what happened in connection with that is worth it's own story but frankly I don't feel ready to write about it yet.