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Family, Mechanics, IT & T, Travel, Property & Investments,

• Family, of course

  Daughters and their families in Perth and Wellington...

  See 'Travel', below.  J

   

• Anything mechanical, electrical, electronic

  Growing up as a New Zealand country boy, I have has numerous opportunities to put my hand to a wide number of things and have achieved consistently good results.

  Cars, planes, boats, etc.  Enjoy owning/driving quality cars.

   

• Information & Telecommunications Technologies

  I like to play technical, but in order to ensure I keep hands off at work I write a computer applications or do technical work at home...  i.e. Play at home and work at work.

  In the past, I have written a number of purpose specific applications for our own use, built eight working PC's out of a dozen that had been written off, etc.

  Despite having been in the IT industry for a hundred years, having managed network staff and having held roles in network administration, I had never set up a network from scratch.  As a learning exercise (and because it seemed a cool thing to do), I Cat 6 cable networked the three PC's in my home.  Since then I have added a wireless network, used mainly for the laptop.

  I wired the house with eight telephone extensions, but have since upgraded with seven cordless phones running off two main stations so most of the jack-points are unused.

  I became interested in VOIP so bought a number in Perth and set the house up through a gateway off one of the PC's.  Incoming VOIP calls rang and could be taken on any of the seven cordless phones, my mobile and bluetooth earpiece.  Since removed it as 'Been there, done that'.

  A mail server application (602 Pro Lan Suite) ran our e-mail services for a time but I retired that and now manage all e-mail (including other family members not living at home) through the www.groufsky.com web site.

  Printers, scanner, documents, music and videos were all shared, with all the PC's running XP professional or XP home (as licensed).  In addition to writing back-ups to any of the DVD and CD writers, the PC's are used to back each other up.  Two hard drives on each of the two desktop PC's plus an external USB and laptop provide over 600 Gb of disk space.

  To provide internet facilities to all the PC's, I installed an DSL Modem/Router, coupled with Telecom NZ Ltd's JetStream (full-speed, unlimited option).  All three PC's are networked via the hard-wired network and wirelessly.

  Wife and I both run G3 mobile phones.

   

• Travel

  My wife and I have had a number of reasons to travel, which we have enjoyed immensely.  We have been lucky enough to visit New York (worked there for a few months), Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Perth and Surfers Paradise and other fascinating cities/countries...  Most of them several times.  Oddly enough, Perth and London featured fairly regularly (Haven't been to the UK since our London family returned to Wellington 'permanently').  Previous trips also took us to see other European cities and whilst in London a year back we popped over to Lisbon, Portugal, for a few days.

  Of course, we have also travelled fairly extensively around our own beautiful NZ and have lived in several towns and cities.

   

• Property & Investments

  In addition to our current home we have owned home and rental properties and aim to build a rental property portfolio over the next few years, as well as increase our investment portfolio.

• Organisational Memberships

  Several IT groups covering various subjects

  Past member of the Chamber of Commerce, Wellington.

  Past member of a number of organisations holding positions such as Founder and Chairman.  These organisations have included Board of Governors at a college, IT groups, management groups, business groups, founding a car club and organisations focussing on other interests.

   

• Golf

  Enthusiasm makes up for a lack of skill.  J

• Targeted for the Future

  • Build my own dream home and/or a rental property in the next few years.

  • "Fixer-uppers", as rentals, are also a fairly likely objective.

  • Continue and broaden our travel.

  • Involvement in other interesting organisations.

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