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No doubt you've googled "melbourne" and "collingwood", and arrived here by mistake. First off, yes, I have the same name, and yes, I'm in the same city, but this website has absolutely nothing to do with the pies. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's continue.........

Right, You've landed in my world. I am Frank Collingwood, youngest son of John and Pat, brother of Chris, Gerard, Pete and Teri, father of Chris, Jason and Marc. Now a resident of Melbourne (Australia, not Florida), but previously of Auckland (NZ), Frankfurt a.M. (Germany), Stone Cross (UK), Stevenage (UK), London (UK, not Ontario), Johannesburg (SA), Durban (SA), Pietermaritzburg (SA) and Bulawayo (Rhodesia). My two favourite passtimes are scuba diving and flying, with flying taking the front seat at the moment.

I moved here permanently in Jan 2004, after seperating from my ex-wife. I wasn't new to Melbourne though, having been over since May of the previous year, flying back to NZ for weekends. Now to confuse some more.......I'm not a sheepshagger, and was only in NZ because the company I was working for in Germany went bust. I'm not German either, but was in Frankfurt because my skills were needed there, and the UK Telecoms industry was a bit wobbly. But.......I'm not British either (Well, I am, we'll get to that later), having arrived in the UK as a backpacker from Seth Efrika just over 10 years ago. I'm not South African either, having been born in a little country called Rhodesia.

"Where?", I hear you ask

Rhodesia. A country which doesn't exist anymore. So, seeing as the only passport I have is British, and the place which really played the major part in forming me as I am today was England, I consider myself to be English. Simple.

Update: I've been back in Auckland since Jan 2005, it was just all too hard being so far away from the boys. I'm enjoying the contact with them and look forward to the weekends I have them.

UPDATE 17/10/2006: Some spammer scumbag has been sending out spam with forged headers showing the sender as being from the collingwood.me.uk domain.

NO SPAM ORIGINATES FROM COLLINGWOOD.ME.UK
NO SPAM HAS EVER ORIGINATED FROM COLLINGWOOD.ME.UK
NO SPAM WILL EVER ORIGINATE FROM COLLINGWOOD.ME.UK

Now that I've got that off my chest, if you are receiving spam that seems to come from an address on my domain, please check very carefully the IP address where it actually originated from, that is where you will find the culprit, and where you need to complain. If you don't know how to read email headers, just google it, there's plenty of information out there on the web.

::: Saturday June 21, 2008 :::

What Kind of a Slack Bum am I?????

Seven months with no updates....! Ok, here's the salient points

Lou & I went out to get a new washing machine (Maytag big bastard). While we were at the appliance shop, a matching tumble dryer and a Dyson caught her eye, while I was attracted to a special Halo 3 edition X-Box 360.
We ended up spending more money than we planned......
I have wiped the microsoft rubbish operating system from my desktop PC. I am now running Mac OS X. It's good!
I have cabled the house, including installing a comms cabinet on the wall above the server rack in the garage. I found a 5 foot long flexible drill bit in the US, which is very handy when running cable in the wall cavities. I also managed to strip the gears in my old drill, but that's OK, it was the perfect excuse to get the 1100 watt Big Bastard Drill (BBD) that I've been wanting to get for a while. I love hardware stores............
When I was using the Roku as our networked media player, it would have major trouble with the video streams from the server, as part of the house backbone was wireless. The same problem cropped up when the Roku was superceded by the X-Box.
This problem is no more. Still using TVersity on the AD controller (The kids still use XP, so it's still required) to do the video transcoding.
I translated the drivers for the Alps MD-5500 printer from Japanese to English. If you want the only consumer printer in the world that is capable of printing white, gold and silver, as well as the usual colours, visit the Alps Supplies website. You can also get inks for the Alps MD (MicroDry) range of printers there
I have spent a lot of time mowing the frigging lawn. It still takes ages, even with the ride-on mower.
I have a permanent Returning Residents Visa now, which means that I have been a permanent resident for two years, and can apply for citizenship in 3 years (Well, 2-1/2 years now) time. When a person first is granted permanent residence, they only get a returning residents visa valid for 2 years. If, in those first two years, the applicant spends more than a specified amount of time outside New Zealand, they will not be granted the permanent returning residents visa. Which means that the next time they exit the country, they will not be allowed back in.
Part of the process in applying for citizenship is that I will have to swear allegiance to the Queen. Now, I'm already a subject of HM Queen Elizabeth II, so why do I have to do it all over again? I'm a loyal British citizen FFS, who always cheers on England against the All Blacks. I'm more of a subject of HM than any kiwi (bloody colonials!). So why do I have to swear allegiance?

It's late. Time for bed.

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