Vicki here is leaving the swimming group, and was farewelled (‘farewell’ is commonly a verb here) (along with ‘gift’) (I’m not thrilled with either) with a cake featuring a bunch of little swimmers.

This weekend I swam in the Round North Head Classic swim, finishing exactly in the middle of the pack.

The pre-start shot above is obviously of me (one of those specks out in the water) and not of my swim buddy Poncho stretching his shoulders. However, since he and the other non-wetsuit swimmers somehow wormed their way into Lee’s viewfinder, I’ll mention that this event is famous for its Freedom division, which allows those who want to swim out to a boat, remove their togs, and continue au naturel.

Maybe next year…

We first heard of Susan Devoy almost exactly two years ago because her name adorned one of the rooms in the funky hotel we were staying at.

Last week we found her handprints in a little walk of fame that languishes behind a not very successful shopping centre that was redeveloped from its previous life as a train depot.

The relatively high likelihood of running into commemorative tributes — that’s tributes plural as in more than one, and in different cities — to a lady squash player is one of New Zealand’s many endearing absurdities.

In a fit of youthful enthusiasm I once filled out a job application with the FBI. I disclosed that I had in fact smoked pot in the past, and they sent back a rejection on the basis that I didn’t meet their character requirements. Everyone came out a winner in that little exchange.

Today LinkedIn offered me the ad pictured above. You’d think the LDS Church’s data-gathering tools would have rejected me before paying for that particular placement. In fact, I sort of assume they have a direct link to the FBI data…

When I approached the office today, I saw this fire truck and my first thought wasn’t “Oh, the humanity” but “Oh, the server room!” I need to go back to ethics class.

But no worries… the firemen were just having a coffee at the neighboring café.

This past week a dear friend and colleague passed away.

Mike Lincoln was on the admissions committee at the University of Utah medical informatics department when I applied to their graduate program in late 1997. On the phone from my basement outside Fulton Missouri, I had to explain to him why my test scores and my transcripts didn’t always reflect the same scholarly potential (speaking specifically about withdrawing from school completely in my junior-ish year, I said “hacky sack”, which was as good an answer as any, and one he accepted), and why the informatics program would be better off with me in it.

Although we’d lost touch recently, we worked closely together in the classroom, and later at Apelon, for many years. He guided my work and shaped my thinking about all things informatics and many things in life. He was a deeply decent and caring man. He hated the bureaucracy in his work at the VA, but he somehow stuck it out through the decades and made a difference wherever he could.

In addition to his actual work, which lives on in his many publications, and in the good health he helped his patients achieve, Mike was a great guy to work with. There are a lot of fond and funny stories to be told (sweaters! saving a little snack for later!), and I’m sure they will be told for a long time, by a lot of people, because he made a lasting impact on so many of us.

The world of medical informatics has been extraordinarily good to me, and running into Mike at the beginning of that journey was one of the main reasons.

It’s NZ Labor Day tomorrow, the start of summer for many.

We went out to Rakino Island on Tom’s boat for a picnic and a swim. The harbour was kinda crowded and choppy, but once we got into the shelter of the bay it was glassy smooth. We joined another work colleague and then another, and had a grand day.

And then on the way back we got an amazing exhibition from the new NZ America’s Cup yacht who was out for a practice session. I’d never seen one of those boats up on the foils before. Wow. The two team support boats and massive police launch ensured we stayed well clear when the yacht was running at speed, but when she pulled up for a crew change we got a little closer.

We went over the bridge to North Head park yesterday and hiked around.

North Head is not far, only another mile from Devonport, where we’ve gone for half a dozen shop-n-stroll Saturday mornings, but we’d never been before.

It’s a beautiful spot. We hiked all over… about an hour… including a tour of the underground tunnels and bunkers that defined this property from the 1880s to the 1960s:

That particular gun was never fired in anger. In fact, the last time it did fire was a salute in 1953 when young Queen Elizabeth came by.

Here’s the beginning of my new Tuesday night routine… joining the Auckland Big Band for rehearsals and – eventually – gigs.

Turns out nobody had a good answer, so about 100 of us decided to go check. In the picture above you can just barely make out the island, really just a sandy lump in the harbour, at the top right.

The annual Watchman Island swim from Herne Bay is the unofficial start of the open water swimming season. I’d never done it, or any of these races, before. But my winter training stood me in good stead, and I finished right in the middle of the pack as expected.

It was a fun event but I did wonder at the need to pay $75 for something I basically do every weekend anyway…

On the way home we chanced across a lady who sells smoked salmon… excellent!