Of fiery sheep and burnt skin

Its been an interesting week. More delving into the guts of Sony Vaio's, a few little jobs here and there. A couple of new websites (well to us.. really they are just updates), a support client wanting us to develop a couple of shopfront websites for him, and I have remote desktop.. and actually all remote services on private LAN's sussed. Even have a how to document together on my hot little macbook. And remote desktop enabled on one of my machines. and visible from the web. Even though we have a dynamic IP address that changes often

Here is the web server on the machine in the corner. If its not there its because I turned it off not cos its down, Totally reliable.. although it of course comes with security issues. And simple in the end. Cool huh? Got that wired now.

A few days ago we went to my old mate Ian and his wife Lisa's for a barbie. I amused myself by hacking Ians router on the fly with my macbook and actually setting up some security. Wide open network. Since then I have read of an astonishing plugin for the firefox web browser called firesheep. It works like this.. if you use a nonsecure network at the same time as someone is using firesheep and you go to any of a myriad non secure sites.. including amongst many others facebook.. Mr firesheep has your username and password. Scarey huh? To beat it you probably need to force the non secure site to run https.. but that makes it harder apparently to deliver advertisements, so may not always even be possible. Its probably why so many of these sites are not secure anyway... that and the overhead in encrypting each bit of data. I have had a look at firesheep and its now on my Macbook.. more when I know more. But this is scary scary stuff

Ian became my mate for life after an accident a trillion years ago when I broke my hip. All other visitors bought flowers. Cept my mum who bought clean underwear in the wrong size. Ian bought scotch. A good mate.

Team Splat! returned to DISC last week for some training. While warming up.. my tire went down. Result a fall and a lack of confidence for the rest of the night. The tire was at 120 psi and at 80 psi in the bend at 25 kph the front wheel tucked under. Not saveable. Not impressed. I caught the replacement tube at 80 psi later too. Not confidence inspiring. Cost me some skin and a good pair of knicks to figure out that if the tire should squeal on a painted line at DISC its a really really good time to stop and check tire pressures.

Sally later on had a 0 kph fall out of the starting gate. Sally was having a slightly nervy night herself. In fact the only confident happy member of Team Splat! was Jenny. Who rode confidently and well Sunday week at Blackburn Velo is Team Splat!'s next official outing.. come along and support us.

Just heard that the Brumby Government has just revisited its abandoned election promise of a rail link to Tullamarine Airport. It helped get em elected last time and then was dumped, this election is looking pretty dodgy, trot it out again. Cos Victorians are stupid. We must be.. look at our pollies. :P But seriously how cynical are these people? Brumby probably thinks he has my vote because he is a cyclist. Think again mate. I know of few people who could not do a better job than you.. and almost no one who could not do it cheaper.

Of business and bikes.

Wednesday, supposedly a really good day to do a blog post. Lets see how this one does on the statistics. I am trying to write the blog 3 times a week, honestly, its just not always happening.

Interesting week. Kathy just fielded a phone call. Do we want to send a couple of representatives up to the Gold Coast to tout for Government Contracts. 11 guaranteed meetings, the people on the other side of the table prepared to sign off on 5 million bucks worth of contracts at a minimum on the spot. Mostly interested in data recovery IT consultancy and Plone. Interesting huh? Would cost us 35K and that all a tax write off.

Bit rich for our blood just atm.. for that I would certainly finish writing our bit of Data Recovery software. I can see it happening tho.. next year or the year after. We dont need much more momentum to be doing all right. And from all right to really good is not nearly as big a step. Their really is a market for companies like us. The big players mostly want to deal with the rich companies.. its small business thats vibrant, interesting, much more involved in networking and personal relationships and actually needs us.. instead of some big player, to sort out their issues.. which are as diverse as a single printer giving them grief, a web site that needs work, or some documentation that needs polishing. I am going into Carlton in a while to look at why one employees Outlook isn't This area is fun.. not boring in the slightest. Its where we want to be.

The evil laptop that has come to give me nightmares has finally got spares on the way. Maybe even the right spares. Its sorta hard to tell. I have hopes. I really really want that done. On that front its almost completely together now. and quite reliable.

I definitely need to pick the brains of a VPN network expert. I have 3 clients requiring a little bit of help in this area and while I am getting there... its a bit trickier than I thought; if you are a VPN expert and prepared to give us a hand send me an email. Kathy is snowed under with web development work. This is all php and other language programming and not simple stuff. Plenty happening on that front.

We are going ahead with the Bendigo expansion. Its a gamble but what in life isn't? At some point I probably need to find a smart, savvy trustworthy (because we dont want them to run away and do their own thing) IT savvy person to be the Bendigo face of Perfect Notes. And in fact we probably want to set them up with a VPN to our server farm I have just realised. So if thats you.. maybe drop us a line. Either Kathy or I and occasionally (as in next week) both of us will be plodding up to Bendigo fairly often. Its obviously time to sort our second car. Sigh. I try for a low impact life style honestly.

Ok... and now for our customary cycling rave.

The sprint series race is happening on Sunday week. My entry is in. I have had many comments to the effect that if I can win D grade so can anyone. I expect some competition in D grade.. and I seriously have to lift my game by maybe 2 seconds a lap to have much of a shot at C grade. Oh their are people in C grade I can beat.. but, there are people I possibly cannot. Sigh. That bike frame prize is looking pretty safe. Team Splat! will be their in its entirety. And we will of course give it our usual red hot go.

I am really proud of Team Splat!. We never set out to set the world on fire.. or win everything we entered.. we set out to have fun.. to give the two girls (I was never going to race track again) a decent support structure and to give it a go. I think our result hugely surpass that. We are a actual force to if not actually be reckoned with at least to be taken seriously. Our first effort with more than one rider entered and we got 1st and 2nd in D grade.

One thing that I feel strongly about in racing is that while its OK to finish last, and its OK to not train every minute, and its OK to not have it be the most important thing in your life its not OK to not take it seriously. Its not OK to not give it a decent try. Its not OK to not train at all. This is especially true of 1 on 1 competition like match sprinting or pursuits. And I,ll tell you why. If you race an opponent who does not do you the credit of putting in and you win.. then you win nothing. Your opponent was unprepared and not serious Your effort is wasted. And if they perchance should win (unlikely because not training tends to go with poor results but some people do have natural talent) then it is even a worse insult to you. It says "I can beat you without even putting in an effort, you are worth nothing, why are you here?" Its positively insulting. Not everyone agrees with me.. perhaps you need to have done Karate or another combat sport to see it this way. What do you think?

This past Sunday was the annual Around The Bay ride. The ATB is the ultimate goal of many recreational riders. Bitch Road fills up with riders of less than ordinary skill for weeks beforehand as they train for it. Sally and I decided to go for a ride.. and take in some of the atmosphere but both of us have done the event before.. and Sally had to be back early for family reasons so we decided to only go as far as Mornington.

I rode in, met Sally at the agreed rendezvous and set off. We went very hard... working mainly in with each other. pointedly staying away from the bunches although very often we ended up towing large bunches of our own. Several times in characteristic ATB style big bunches pushed past us, died instantly and we rode around the outside of them. We saw many interesting examples of inadequate roadcraft, amusing levels of non skill and amazing idioticity I mean really.. riding a TT bike.. in the bars in a bunch, and an average bunch at that.

We stopped several times for coffee and to watch the passing parade, saw the aftermath of a fatal heart attack on Olivers, Hill in Frankston (A likely place for a heart attack I must say) and stopped for coffee whenever it started raining.

On the return we followed the same procedure.. riding side by side chatting or doing bit and bit.. Sally and I riding very well together.. the trust built up by riding track very evident. Once or twice we worked in with other people one of who was on a Bike Friday. Wow you can draft those small wheeled bikes close . I figured out that you need not ever hit the back wheel, you could always put out an arm and push the bloke away. And the draft that close was amazing. I want a Bike Friday.

Afterwards Sally and I parted company on Princes Bridge. I went to the finish. Met many people I know. Drank beer. Had dinner with Kathy, and our friends Robyn and Ros. Robyn and I co own a unit in Glen Iris. Ros came down from Darwin to stay with her for the ATB. And then I rode home. Finishing off with a good hard 170 km for the day. And more hills than the ATB. A wonderful wonderful day.

Its been a while

Its a week since I did a post. Oops. And that was on a Monday too.. Supposedly the worst day to do a post. At least according to my teammate Sally who is supposed to know about social media.

http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m162/percrime/DISC/SallyDISC1.jpg


I don't know why so long.. lack of inspiration or something. Nothing I felt strongly enough to comment on perhaps. So I will try and make up for it all over the next few days. Writing or at least writing intelligently as I try and do can be just a bit difficult to start. Its ok IF you have something to say.. hard otherwise. I always find something to say but that blank LCD screen can be a bit intimidating.

OK lets briefly cover all the bases today. Cycling, well we did the inaugural 'waffle ride' last Sunday. Sally and I represented Team Splat! Sally posting as 'Elefunksoup' posted a hilarious ride report on BV forums. The waffles were provided by Rebecca, a truly lovely Canadian imput. It was a great day.. decent training into a punishing headwind on the return, and the event is a keeper.

It was the last winter training effort at DISC last night. It came to a choice between doing some gardening and attending DISC or going to Ballarat and watching the amazing Jeannie Longo race. At 51 Jeannie is the current outright womens TT champion of France. Sadly gardening won. I had to deliver Sally's track bike to her as it was at my place anyway. Another skills session. 3 handicap races.. Sally is easily the faster rider over 100 metres.. but over 500 I made her work for her 2 wins. There were 3 of us in those races.. I scored one win and 2 seconds to Sally. Of course the third rider is about 12 :( Sigh. Age may not weary us, but it makes everyone except Jeannie Longo slower. Sally bought along her own cheer squad. Her fella and her dad. So sweet. We are a bunch of nostalgic softies us trackies.

TRACK season starts. The worlds are here and is not the footy going to play hell with that? I think I will write on that more in another post but the draw in the footy is a terrible result for the UCI. Sad huh? Anyway the sprint series starts for Team Splat! next weekend. We have 3 riders up for it.. including me. We have approached informally another girl from DUCC's to perhaps join the team. Is it coincidence that Team Splat! is pretty girl heavy? Even I have been told I ride like a girl.. which er.. I dont think was meant as a compliment even tho I took it as one. :D Very very proud of my girls

Come and watch Team Splat! race. And let us know if you are interested in a jersey. I need about 50 firm orders. Can't be too hard. It will be a plain jersey.. in grey represent concrete or bitumen... with the Team Splat! blood splatter pattern front and rear.

I notice that my lovely niece Leah "Little Miss Scribble" is still reading my ramblings. Leah is one of the most important people in the world and I find that immensely satisfying and shall try and lift my game here to do her proud. Its been a while but I shall likely be catching up with her today in the remote wilderness stone fortress in which she, and her heavily armed retainers and guardians reside. Because PerfectNotes is going bush.. to talk to some country people, do some county networking and hopefully chase up some business. We have a networking meeting scheduled in Bendigo which we hope will lead to something worthwhile. Fingers crossed. We shall be pushing the Virtual Assistant service heavily. In fact since I imagine that Bendigo has some decent techs.. we shall be concentrating on the VA side of things.

Its scary to realise that Leah is now the same age her mum was when I first met her. I remember that meeting with her mum too. Hi Jeannine. Put the kettle on please.

One of my camera's has turned up. Its the Sony. It would be. I am still resurrecting this Sony laptop.. one of the connectors has what looks like a factory fix on it and I cannot for the life of me manage a decent connection. Sucks. My opinion of Sony has gone through the floor and I will never be recommending Sony products again. If the damn manufacturer does not have service manuals available deal with some one who does. Its a simple rule. Follow it.

OK Social Comment. The winging by the people of Geelong over hosting the world cycling championships is pathetic. I wont be going down more than a couple of times because I dont want to spend time and money in such a bogan backwater.. If the event fails, its going to be down to the losers of Geelong doing all they can to make it fail. Football is pretty much it for sport down there. Geelong always represents itself as a pro cycling city but that has never been my experience. I had a long term girlfriend in Geelong once and the city has never endeared itself to me in any way on my commutes to her. Its a bustling city with all the charm of a small hillbilly town. And the ceaseless complaints about having a couple of streets blocked off for something that is not the footy are annoying me.

Gee I am a moody bugger.

Had a couple of issues this last week. Its all sortable of course.. nearly anything is. But instantly I go from being upbeat and optimistic and working my butt off for this business to moody.. unhappy, dare I say 'grumpy?' and wanting to crawl back into bed. I am not a depressive person.. and I have friends who deal with deep depression.. been there and not going there again, but sometimes I peer over the edge of that cliff and see the depths below. Scary. Got to work on being upbeat.

Its time to look at the google add words campaign again. The Virtual Assistant one. We are running a couple of these campaigns for clients and they have been hugely successful. This one.. not so much. Its tricky as I have alluded too in the past. The obvious keywords are wrong or far too widely applicable. What would you type in if you wanted to hire a VIrtual Assistant in Melbourne to.... scan some stuff in for you, polish up a report, email a bunch of clients, build a spread sheet for you, clean up some photo's update a web site, ghostwrite a business blog? See what I mean? Its a serious question by the way..what keywords are applicable? Talk to me. We need this to work

PerfectNotes IT also needs to find a decent electronics tech.. I can solder a component in OK,, can swap out bits... figure out some of a board,s logic, but we need occasional access to someone who can say, "Its the F1113 transistor here, if I put in a C112 in it will work just fine" Or who is at least better than me. They need to be within Coooee of the Melbourne Eastern Suburbs, Anyone? Am I a voice shouting in the wilderness here?

During the week I was offered a hummmmmm sponsored entry into the Degani Kinglake Ride a bit of a hill fest in the kinglake area. My team leader Ian , his missus Lisa and various others from Lisa's company were going to be doing it as a team. Late notice as the ride was yesterday (Sunday) and it was Saturday evening before I read the ride instructions. Holy frak... it was like reading the instructions to the Paris Dakar Rally or the Whitbread Race I posted on BV forums about the lack of an EPIRB in the required bits, and got a post back saying it and radio skeds and frequencies were on the last page. A joke but not by much. Hey its just a pootle in the hills on public roads. Not that you would know it. And the rules. "No overtaking" "Do not exceed 60 kph" Riiiiiighhhhhhht.

Met up with Ian and Lisa at their house and agreed to meet at the start.. and that was the last I saw of them till I called in on the way home. They never made it.. As far as I know I was the only team member to ride. Sigh. There is a picture of Ian in Wikapedia under "unreliable" Not what I needed.

I had a good day anyway. Met one person I knew. I would honestly have thought that it was impossible to have 3500 cyclists in a bunch anywhere near Melbourne and not have people there I knew. Mind you everyone was dressed the same. Nice jersey. Good score


Anyway.... Here is my FB post about the ride. And indeed the evening.

Ride leaving time 9:00. Ride completed.... 11:20. Nominated time for ride 3 hours. Actual time 2 hours 20 mins. Average speed 28 ish. Time for will walker climb 28 minutes 15 secs .. just under twice his time. :( Passed 128 people on the climb. Got passed by about 40... none on bikes and mostly in vintage mercedes that sounded worse than me.

Rode the first 15 km and the start with fixie. We spent most of that time being rude to the people shoving past on the left... All of whom blew up on the first climb

Problems I had. some lower back pain...

Then I went to DISC and got my legs torn off me by CARL. But did ride a really good take a lap with Jenny... we took 3 laps from the bunch together.. last launching an attack with 4 laps to go and convincingly catching them with time to spare.

My leggses hurties.

And Jenny wrote about DISC on the Team Splat! page

well, Dave and I were at DISC training tonight - Sally off doing some road riding.
Carl from aboc cycling ran another great session for the "enduro" bunch. One of our tidiest efforts at the warm-up laps.
3 x 3 minute bursts with gradual increments in speed before a final sprint.
Followed by 50 sec recovery/10 sec sprint bursts for 15 minutes.
"Take-a -lap" drill to finish. We managed a fine piece of Team Spat! co-operation and worked together to take 3 laps from the "bunch".

Truly, it's the first night I have felt really comfortable at DISC and not panicky at all.

I,ll see if I can find a pic of me on this ride at some point. The climb referred to is some 7+ km steep pitch that a really quick rider onces set a superb time up.. possibly on a motorcycle (snicker)

THe world champs are nearly here. The biggest thing to EVER happen in cycling in Australia is happening just down the road in Boganville.. er Geelong. Nothing much has been said about it.. THe locals mostly seem to not want it there. If its not V8 motor racing, or the Footy its foreign. One bloke said "WHo cares about cycling?" 350 million more people than ever have heard about Aussie Rules you hillbilly. Sheisse. What can you do? No advertising has been seen. No promotion. Lets ignore it.. and it will go away and not come back.

But Cycling Tips Blog put it so much better than I can

Tomorrow when the government began

Apparently we are going to get a government this weekend. And purely by coincidence the heaviest rain of the year and gales and thunderstorms. I suspect that there is a God and s/he has an evil sense of humor.

The helmet law that has foredoomed the bluebike hire scheme in Melbourne city has finally come into open discussion. In fact what moved me to comment was this thread on BV forums. Its just another of the endless helmet threads that usually are only fought out by those who have long established their position. But over the years a noticeable shift has occurred, few now are overwhelmingly in favor of compulsion, nearly all accept that less people cycle because of helmet laws and their is some derision, not entirely all down to me, when someone claims that their helmet saved their lives, leaving them with not a hair out of place or a scratch. We have even seen crashes on BV forums in recent weeks where bones were broken without the words "my helmet saved my life" appearing at all. And now TV and news stories questioning the helmet law. And some well known personalities

However this post by taka

( demonstrates that some people totally lack empathy and the ability to think)

demonstrates that some people still don't understand the argument that a good idea (wearing a helmet in case you fall off) can be a bad bit of legislation.

Dear Sue, I am sorry you feel so strongly about helmet. But if you want my rego's TAC money to cover your head injury, well ... that is so unfair.

Yes I totally agree that you should have your freedom of choice, as long as I don't friking pay for it at the end.

I am no saint. I don't care if u die. I just don't want to be worse off in my pocket. Not to mention you have created more work for a pathologist who has to do your autopsy.

The argument that the helmet law is a bad thing goes like this. Firstly the helmet law dooms bike hire schemes like the Melbourne scene. Secondly the evidence that bicycle helmets actually save lives (as opposed to stitches, mild concussions and the odd ear) is far from totally convincing. The statistical studies that claim to prove it are clearly crap when you actually look at how the data was obtained. All the ones that see no such proof appear far better designed And the fact that motorcycle helmets, seatbelts, airbags, and the like actually work is perfectly clear from similar studies. And at best arguably not so in this case. So if the evidence is not clear why legislate? Its nanny state nuttiness.

But its the third argument that is totally convincing. To even the most callous pragmatist such as taka. Provided they are capable of clear thinking at any rate. And that is the economic argument

I,ll keep this really simple and let my readers do the research. Or not I guess, depending on how interested they are. But essentially this argument goes like this. Obesity, diabetes and heart disease are huge killers. Therefore they cost the health system a packet

Cycle commuting and cycling generally are both environmentally nice and an effective defense against these issues A helmet law clearly decreases cycling use. Lots of pro helmet people say not by very much.. but personally I think the evidence is hugely against them in this. The failure of the bike hire scheme, the only place in the world such a scheme has failed, seems a pointer to me. However lets concede the point.. absurd to do so but for the sake of the exercise lets. Even a few % discouragement is still discouragement

On average IF bicycle helmets cut fatal accidents by half (of which their is no evidence) and if helmets discourage cycling by only 10 % or so of people then on any possible set of figures more of these people will die from disease bought on by the lack of exercise than will die by accident on a bicycle due to not wearing a helmet. That is to say that the best case you can make for a helmet law still has more people dying because of it than are saved by it.

And that is ignoring completely some of the more subtle issues of a helmet law.. for example the UK studies that show that motorists give helmet less riders more space, maybe you are more likely to be hit wearing a helmet. Risk compensation theory says you are more likely to take risks wearing a helmet. Its widely accepted that the more cyclists that are on the roads, the more likely car drivers are to behave sensibly around cyclists and the less risk per cyclist. The public perception of cycling as dangerous only seems to actually exist in countries with high rates of helmet use. These sort of effects are likely to more than negate any beneficial effects of a helmet law in themselves.

And of course repealing a helmet law does not make it illegal to use a helmet. It just means one can hire a blue bike to get across town without having to go and buy a helmet.

Australia has one of the lowest commuter cycling rates in the world. And we have helmet laws. Good laws travel. Practically no one else has helmet laws. Seems pretty obvious to me. I find the economic argument to be totally convincing. Its a bad law.

But maybe I don,t understand economics. Was a story on the news this morning. In the US many people are defaulting on their house mortgages. Apparently many mortgages are far more than the property is worth. And apparently if someone walks away from a mortgage, then the moment it is reclaimed by the bank its worth 10% of what it was worth hours before. So why does this not push the mortgage rates down? Why are people not giving loans to people who have defaulted on a house loan to buy their house back for 10 cents on the dollar?. What am I missing?

The movie Tomorrow when the war began, which I have previously discussed on this blog, is now showing. Its going to be a smash. I shall go and see it in the next few days and report on it

We have two web sites probably going live this weekend.
dromanamowerservice.com.au which is Dromana mowers... Gozzo from BV forums, and plantsupplies.com.au which is a joint venture between us at PerfectNotes and our occasional staffer Mark Condron. Don't buy anything on the plantsupplies site just at the moment.. the shopping cart stuff is in final testing.

3 strikes and you are.....slightly embarrassed.

Might be a long and somewhat rambling discourse today, unlike my normal swift, tightly edited and targeted posts. (Falls over laughing) I have much on which I wish to comment.. so if I can remember any of it at this silly hour I shall do so.

Was told.. by someone who as far as I know is in absolutely no position to know, that the ideal number of blog posts is 3 a week and never on a Monday. I have not the slightest clue if their is any truth to this whatsoever yet I notice that I do seem to average about 3 posts a week, and my Monday posts do seem to not score many hits. Interesting. I wonder if their is anything to it.

Cycling is a sport where a lot of drug cheats are caught, and expelled from the sport. We claim it as a clean sport because we catch cheats. Other sports claim it as a dirty sport for exactly the same reason. I love the irony in this In very topical news under the laughably weak Australian Footy League drug testing policy.. which essentially consists of waiting for Victoria Police to catch someone using drugs (usually after the hospital runs blood tests after they have rolled their car up into a ball) well known Hawthorn footballer Travis Tuck has now be caught 3 times using drugs. He is not well known to me by the way.. hopefully I have the club right. 12 week suspension. Heh.. try getting a 12 week suspension for your third offence in cycling mate. And yes he was caught by Victoria Police.

He is the first bloke to be caught under the 3 strikes and we will tell your club you have been a naughty boy and let the media know about it policy of the league. Its not surprising, I have never been drug tested by the cops.. or by the footy league. The last time I looked at this the league averaged one drug test per player per year. In cycling I have heard of pro riders having a team of testers cooling their heels in a riders lounge while a second group of testers had a go. In off season. And 3 strikes before drug use is alleged.. bet Lance wishes that was the case.

In cycling we find and deal with our drug cheats. Footy hides theirs. Pretty obvious which sport is really the cleaner. To a thinking audience.

Speaking of the Police, I was passing Box Hill cop shop last night on my commute home. Cop car out the front. RACV van in front of it. RACV man changing the Cop Cars flat tire. Sigh. I remember when cops could change a flat themselves. My dad remembers when they might stop and give you a hand.

The last combat troops pulled out of Iraq today. Mind you they are leaving 50,000 heavily armed and armoured non combat troops and any number of heavily armed and armoured private security people in the county. But essentially Iraq,lacking a government and most essential services is running its own security. By any measure the US had firm if not total control of the country...a few people killed daily is not the same as not having control. And clearly no one wanted the US there. But its going to be interesting to see what happens. The Iraqi army was never much chop, how its going to stop the country becoming a toy for warlords and mullah's is beyond me. The problem of course is all the real normal people stuck in the middle of it all. I don,t have any answers, well I do have one very politically incorrect answer that I won,t share here. I hope the optimism is warranted.

The cost of the Iraq war to the US... well 3/4 of a trillion dollars US. Could be looked on as a financial stimulus package I guess. 4000 ish US soldiers dead. In 7 years Which sounds a lot. But its actually less than a 10th of a years road toll. In fact its less than the number of Americans shot dead in America yearly. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Australia also has no real government after the election last week. Which major party wins is going to come down to the independents. Who are negotiating for stupid little concessions for their own electorates like a pimp looking for a good price. It looks like Senator Conways bill for internet censorship is dead.. but he is going to keep his job. Dammit. Family firsts senator is still around. Ahhh... those keen, incisive and very forgiving and tolerant religious types. The national broadband network is going to go ahead too.. all of the independents are in country areas and strangely the country seems to be in favor of moving telecommunications into the 21'st century. All in all I guess its a win.. it certainly makes the point that the electorate is a bit fed up with politicians. It does however leave our country with a government in exactly the same deadlocked situation as the government of Iraq. Hopefully not for as long.

We have quite a lot of work on at the moment. I,ll write on that in the next post I think.. Cos I had better go and do some

A Pyrrhic victory

A Pyrrhic victory is one that comes at great cost to the victor. Let me explain.
This morning was the monthly Begian Beer Cafe Cycling Club brecky. A must not miss ludicrously cheap breakfast and social get together for the very very elite of Melbourne cycling. Afterwords I had to go and help a mate move....a sad story that certainly should not be related here, and a tough second half to the day. But the morning promised to be fun.

So up at some silly hour before dawn. It was pouring.. seriously teeming down. I changed.... gulped down a coffee and set off. Soaked in meters. Ahhh well. On to Whitehorse road. where in Box Hill after a short chase I caught another cyclist. We looked at each other.. both wearing spray jackets, his red.. mine yellow.. both with faces streaming with water. I said "morning", he replied "lovely morning" "Mmmmm bit damp" I said, and we splashed off in our different directions. Turning up through.Burnley for the 3rd month in a row the same fool in the dirty unpainted aluminium riveted body 8 ton van brushed past within inches. This time however I saw where the tu$% parked outside Burnley Golf club. Heheheheheh

It stopped raining in South Yarra. Met up with the motley crew at the BBC and we set off for the traditional pre waffles ride to Black Rock and back. Trying to organise a peleton but honestly its like herding ducks. Me Sally, Brice, Dale Katrina and Thorie did our best to set a good example up the front. I managed a mild dig off the front at the Black Rock but was beaten in style by Baudman. Meh. Amble back somehow again on the front. Chatting to various acquaintances, admiring the female joggers.. especially the HAF exhibitionist in the halter top. By the time we got to St Kilda only 5 or so of us were left. In spite of our best effort. Be patient, I am getting there.

Pootle down Barkly st marvelling at the lack of skill of the average car driver, and then the big dig for the days remaining glory. KIng of the Mountain of Barkly st Hill. Big dig... look back.. no one close. Baudman 100 metres back and everyone else not even that close. Across the line. Win. Glory. Roll to a stop at the lights. THen Baudman and a couple of others.
And a car in the other lane. Apparently had been driving beside the others yelling "Allez Allez" out the window.

And he says out the window to Baudman. "What happened? You let the old bloke beat you"

Sigh.

Well it WAS a good day.

THere is always so much I want to fit in these blogs. I always post so much less than I want to say. Sometimes I go back and edit but there are few of them I am really happy with. ,starting to try to segment the cycling, social comment and work bits..but life does not come neatly parcelled and mostly neither do my posts.

On Tuesday evening I went to the aid (sorta ) of a mate who is going through a difficult time. Aiding him consisted of listening to him while eating his pasta. Its the sort of thing I do for my mates.. eat their pasta. As to my enemies... well actually I have no enemies.. a few people I hold in total contempt but I digress.

On the way there I saw the single stupidest pedestrian of the year. I was at the intersection of Brunswick St and Johnston... heading north. Red light. Off to the right is an ambo with lights and sirens in splendid working order coming towards us. We get a green light. Amazingly no one moves. The ambo moves into the intersection at barely walking pace. Tall young african girl pushes through all the 20 or so peds waiting for the ambulance on the SW corner of the intersection and ambles across. The ambo has his hand on the horn.. both sirens working and has stopped a metre from her before she notices. She does a classic double take and still takes another few seconds to get out of the way. Some of the other people gave her a spontaneous ironic clap. Which in Brunswick St.. not the home of the worlds smartest pedestrians, has to mark her as something very 'special'.

Seriously. Aside from the fact you are just not a useful person if all you contribute to the world is getting in the way of an ambo.. what sort of person goes through life that enclosed in their own mind that they miss that much of the world? And what is the point of living with that minimal amount of awareness of the world you live in? I see dumb people all the time.. people with minimal awareness of anything outside themselves Wake up guys. Smell the roses. Have a look around. The life you save may be mine. Besides if you don.t notice anything of life.. how much point is there?

We did a seminar in Docklands, the Melbourne Bayside and up and coming area. It was on small business opportunities and directions.. and part of the state government's month long push to promote small business. By weird coincidence I ran into a bloke I had just met the day before at Monash. And a bloke studying business at Swinburne Uni where I have my degree from. And made a bunch of potentially useful contacts. Kathy and I got up early and went into town two up on the motorcycle.

I cannot understand why anyone would commute by car.. I would commit suicide or homicide in a month. I guess many do. Some drivers out there were insane... Would the woman in the Honda Jazz please put her book down. And you the loon in the silver Audi (why does no one sane own a silver or black Audi, is it some sort of sales requirement.. "Oh look a loon.. lets sell him a silver one") 6 inches from Kathys left boot at 60 KPH is not as smart as you think it it. I know you think you won,t get hurt in the .. and I use the word loosely... accident... don't take that for granted. :( Was fun watching you squeal to a stop in Victoria St when you realised you were not going to fit through the gap we did tho. Heh. Get a motorbike mate. Or a pushbike. Then it will be you that your inappropriate overly agressive driving hurts. Which seems far more morally acceptable to me.

We went in by the MRR. The Maling Room Ride. A regular bicycle training ride that ends at the Maling Room Cafe. I do the ride pretty regularly and Kathy caught up with some old friends. It was cool turning up on the motorcycle. No one wanted to take me on in the hill climb. And surrounded by the shivering lycra clad, us two leather clad people felt smugly warm. :D

The seminar was great. Took a phonecall from a client about a dead laptop during it. Not actually when one of the speakers was up...unlike the loud woman nearby. She probably did not need the phone.. was talking loudly enough to be heard by the person she was speaking to, without telecommunications. About time we started telling people like this how bloody rude they are. Anyway I arranged to call in on the client on the way back to PNHQ (Perfect Notes Head Quarters) Got a lot of ideas out of it all. Starting to implement them now.

What do you think of this as an elevator pitch for PerfectNotes?

We do IT related support for your small business

Yes? I really think that that one works. Would appreciate feedback tho. A bunch of stuff to implement. Mark and my website for Marks online plant sales is up at plantsupplies.com.au It has no content yet but it will happen pretty soon. Quite a lot happening at the moment.

We left.. swung by the client and I sorted his machine in... oh.. 15 mins. Smug grin. We went to Lygon St and ate lunch, then went home. And thats when I discovered I had lost my new camera. Bummer. I am seriously depressed. Must have put it down when I answered the phone. Idiot. Total idiot. Seriously upset about that. Spoilt my day.

Ok in an attempt to cheer myself up this really good Vidman pic from Sundays ABOC session

Most of Team Splat! training



.

One less car! :D

I cannot believe it. 6 days without a new post and wow.. a new highest number of hits.. and a steady climb in readership. Must be a lot of intelligent articulate types out there just discovering my verbose nature.

The toyota has finally gone. A young bloke won it for.. oh about $225 so about 75 bucks less than the first time it was up for auction.. but still about $100 more than it was worth as razor blades. Its in the area I could live with. So its gone. Our dweeb tombro1546 who won it the first time but never responded has er.. left ebay.. time wasting piece of cow dung that he was. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

When the boys turned up they spent so long playing with the thing I honestly thought they were going to give us issues. I mean honestly.. its straight.. never been seriously hit.. has no rust.. moves under its own power both forwards and backwards and they got it for pocket money. But the buyer did not seem totally happy.. It did turn out that every battery I had was incapable of keeping the thing running. They ran it out of fuel on the test drive. And in the end took off with one of my fuel cans. Sigh. Nothing is simple. They turned out to be ok. Maybe they will bring it back. My can that is. NOT THE CAR

I went out before they took it away. Took a couple of pics with Kathy on the bonnet. Meh. Here is the good one. I swear the other one is one of the more unflattering pics I have ever taken. If enough people ask I might just put it up. But for the moment I shall be kind.



The BMW in the pic behind Kathy is the next thing to go. Kathy has some time ago devalued it by a few K in about 0.5 second. Its not worth heaps. Want it?

We went to DISC again Sunday. Sally managed to have a light fall.. dodgy tire.. and my mate David who I had dragged along.. in his first 10 seconds or so riding on wood managed to run over her. And stay up Nothing wrong with his bike skills. I have quite a few pics to put up this time. Mostly taken by Jenny who did not ride this time.. the dreaded lurgy. Convincing proof that I am crap at holding a wheel Here is one shot. I,ll put up another couple later.


The pic below was taken by Rach. Pretty good shot of a pretty bad paceline.



I have a couple of jobs at the moment I have way underquoted on. Always depressing. Not big jobs tho. Finally have bits of the plantsupplies.com.au site happening.. in fact I will spend some of tonight getting some of the nursery pics in shape for it. Is going to be really cool. That site is going to make us some real money. Just as soon as I figure out how. Sigh.

The Mullum Mullum trail post I did spawned a thread on BV forums here. It did not lead to the huge explosion in comments I was hoping for.. with plans eventually to maybe make a reporter notice it, instead leading to a couple of pages of discussion on the forum. But its all totally solidly in support of my point. For example rjk starts off like this

The wooden bridge i had the off was on the one just past quarry road on the way to Mitcham damage 2 ribs and bottom bracket axle, right pedal and crank, also probably weakened my handlebars which might have caused my big off 6 months later.

Also this grate gave my a brown pants moment

The election is 4 days away.. I have no clue how I am going to vote on that. But Sally has made her own points in her own blog I will be putting Conroy last. Way last. Very last. I hope its last enough.

On any sunday.

Feeling very lazy here. Doing lots of entry of data into a customer site. I must ask Kathy what we charge for this. It cannot be enough.
Its a case of creating the object.. uploading and editing a table type description, doing a short description of the thing in English and I know little about these particular 'things', more than anyone else here does mind you, and then guestimating shipping weights and dimensions. When we show all this to the customer hopefully he comes back with more accurate numbers and I get to put those corrections in. Oh joy :D. When I spoke to him on FB the other night mind you.. he said I was spot on with some of them.

Its a grind. Needs to be done tho.

How many people picked up on my cunning plan to fix the temporary power outage on the top floor of a customer building? I,ll give you a big hint. It involved an extension lead. Not by any means a perfect fix but hey it got their mail happening again. And I did check with them to find out if such a solution was acceptable. And yes I did go in early Sunday morning and implement it. If its stupid and it works it ain't stupid. I shall write about dodgy but working tech solutions soon I think. I have a couple of great stories.

A 24/7 support organisation us. Woot. PerfectNotes IT... for all your IT, some of your cycling and all your 84 Corona needs. And yes someone has bid on the ebay Corona, and a nice young couple came around and looked at it last night

Too much data entry to do.. so to fill out this post.. pics follow from DISC last night.
Last night was as always good. I am still slow but working on it. Jenny came and was very brave. The sad news that an unnamed Team Splat! rider will be moving to Newcastle in the new year hit Team Splat!s race director hard :( The individual concerned claims its for personal reasons but the rumor is that they have signed a lucrative contract with a pro team and will be racing in Europe next summer.

I had a win in that Swervin Merv Hughes bought some surplus cogs along and gave me a 12 (never had a 12 before) and a 15 to replace the one Sally had borrowed. Sally bought the 15 back as well (heh) so I was able to tell her to keep it. Thanks Merv, I owe you a beer for that.

Very atmospheric shot of Jenny vs 'the Wall' that I think captures something of how scary it can be


Sally vs 'the Wall'


Practicing starts.


Emily launches


Carl "Mr ABOC" Never called that. Sometimes called Bleve.


A really good pic of Sally


Team Splat! girls




ABOC training group.

Maybe we should have let an engineer design it?

Instead of the work experience kid.

On the other hand not just everyone would give an 18 year old engineer a budget of $21.95 and responsibility for an entire bike path.. and even fewer would give him a case of booze before turning him loose with a drafting table. And the results have given us all so many giggles.

So on Saturday I was woken up by Kathy.. server had fallen over at a clients work place. Eventually I drove in and checked it out.. Server had fallen over because the UPS had gone flat. Because it was getting no power. Because the floor had no power. Hmmm. No immediate solution but I do now have a cunning plan. (to quote Blackadder) Next post may elaborate. Or not. Guess you will just have to read it to find out.

So back home. Young Jenny turned up and we decided to go for a ride. I have long meant to comment on the superb design qualities of the mightly Eastlink bike path and so I took my new camera and we set off. And just a couple of klicks from home is the first interesting bit of er 'innovative' design. Entertaining design anyway.

Just a tunnel you say. Nothing bad about that. No at that point 15 feet or so from the end it looks fine.. just a blind left turn.. keep left and you will be fine... Except for this A steel grate hidden just around the bend exactly square in the middle of the left side of the path. If you do not know its there then its potentially lethal and why would anyone expect it to be there? But if you do know its there then the safe way to pass it and avoid any chance of a head on with an oncoming cyclist or jogger is to pass the grate on the left. Which means your helmet clears the corner of the tunnel entrance, which is hard edged concrete, by a few inches. If it were wet or icy and there was traffic going the other way it could end in tears. Total genius. Someone who owned a funeral parlor contributed to that design.

See what gets me most about this sort of stupidity is that no one would ever do it on a road. They would expect to get their ass sued off when inevitably some less than bright person stuffed up and got hurt. But its a bike path so who cares? Its a foreseeable hazard so take care and if not, too bad. But really.. no one expects freeways for bikes.. but surely we can do better than this.

This bit is cute. Its not actually dangerous.. and in fact its fun. But really.... either this is a path for saturday pootles or one for commuting.. This is a bit experts only.. Oh the path is just barely visible in the top of the pic to the right. Well maybe only cos I know its there. Thats right.. they could have done it all in a straight line



Wooden bridges and especially curved downhill wooden bridges with camber are sort of dangerous to bicycles, I have already written about one recent death on one. There have been others. Really a stupid thing to put on a bike path therefore... a wooden bridge. Like this.

Slippery when wet

And when dry. When covered in leaf litter. When frosty. When cold. In fact slippery all the time except for at noon on a hot day in summer. All of em are curved. Mostly downhill or uphill. One of them leads straight onto another one turning the other way. The one below has wire netting into the braking zone.. to improve traction. Its the only one. I guess someone got badly hurt their and the Parks people decided to do something. Hmmm. Something is wrong with that plan I think


How about this? Jenny propped in the middle of the path?

Or not.

Amusing huh? The road actually goes no where. Its a dead end. And the car traffic faces a give way sign for the bike path. So I guess bothering cyclists by telling them of the road would just bother them unnecessarily. I mean the cars are going to stop. Right?

To keep us amused the path has a couple of little road sections. This is one.


Yes.. Thats all of it. Cute huh?

Lots of the path is really really pretty. Lots of the corners have little streams running across the path after our recent rains. To be fair Easlink undoubtedly spent more on drainage for the tollway than they did on the whole path. The other amusement is the rises and falls in the path. While cars have to manage with pesky engines and so need a near flat surface bicycles suffer no such issues. Here our lead climber tackles a steep pitch without even a rope to save her from certain death.
The slow sign is totally redundant. Personally I think it a sick joke on the part of the designer, The path goes around that bend then kicks up steeper for a couple more hundred metres with (of course) another 'slow' sign. No problem for grandad on the K mart roady and the 5 year old on the tricycle. Not much.

The path is more than twice the distance of the on road route. At a guess it has more than 4 times the amount of climbing. Its probably 3 times the distance of the onroad route if bicycles could use the tollway. So as a commuting route its rubbish. As a jogging path its fine...as a sunday ride path for families its rubbish.. As a skills session for the reasonably quick who are decent climbers and not totally adverse to sharing the path with the odd rabid out of control dog and its rabid out of control owner its wonderful... just not sure that thats the target market for this sort of infrastructure.

Let me know if you want to see more?

Back to Track

I was going to talk about the bike lanes in Albert St East Melbourne so lets do that first (or was I going to rave about the hire bike scheme? My mind is going.. I can feel it. Ahhh well one rave at a post)

These two pictures one taken just before and the other just after these lanes came in. (thanking the Age online ) shows what we are talking about. The cars in the left lane are actually parked. Maybe. Sorta hard to tell. Definitely part of the issue.

Let me point you at this thread on BV forums.

Here is Bicycle Victoria's take on it all. Most of which I think is rubbish.

Speaking as a very experienced cyclist (he says looking at the floor shyly and scuffing his cleated feet) going into town in times of heavy traffic its sort of ok(ish) . But crikey some people park so badly they should lose their licenses.. or at the very least be booked. I am going to take a camera in some time soon. Its mildly entertaining watching them.

Coming out of town.. late in the evening its rather lethal. 40 kph is dangerously fast on it.. and I usually hit 50 for most of that trip on the mostly downhill road. Pretty safely using a lane and traveling at the same speed as the cars . The bike lane green surface is unsettlingly loose. The driveways are lethal.. and at 30 I usually manage to have a near miss with someone pulling across the bike lane and propping while they check for cars. Although the green surface may be loose I know of someone who has destroyed a tire on it while panic braking which means that the surface must be as abrasive as hell. The normal problem of cars overtaking marginally faster than you.. and instantly turning left is aggravated by the design.. they have some actual excuse They come up the outside of the row of parked cars and you come up the inside The poles now sticking out of the edge of the bike lane on the north west end are absolutely for sure going to kill or maim someone. And they are so obviously lethal that I plan to go in with a camera on Monday.. take pics of them and make them available to the police and or coroner when I hear of it happening

What I would do is.. maybe try it for a bit longer on the uphill into town.. With some serious enforcement. On the way out of town I would lose the car parking altogether. I would make the left lane entirely a bicycle lane.. it would be very wide. And I would allow cars in it. Difficult to say what I mean but try and market it as a non exclusive bicycle lane in which bicycles have the right of way.

The way to make cycling safer in the city is to make the strict liability on the car. Where there is an accident the car driver is assumed at fault in the absence of other evidence. If it can be demonstrated the cyclist is at fault then the cyclist is charged but otherwise the car driver is assumed at fault. This works in a lot of countries and pretty much gets rid of the sort of accident where the car driver claims the cyclist must have swerved. It makes car drivers careful of cyclists. It makes the more dangerous vehicle carry the onus which to me at least seems absolutely reasonable. Comments anyone?

Coming up Lonsdale street in the evening on friday one of my tail lights came off.. Stopped in the middle of the lane. Maybe a hundred cars missed it but the very last one.. some sod in a Camry managed by swerving to hit it fair and square. Class mate... pure class. Whoever you are, your wife and kids think you are worth living with. Wait. Sooner or later they will find out the truth.. self evident to many of us who share the planet with you. Take your small minded moment of triumph and hug it to you because you are indeed pathetic..

OK two raves per blog post.

The sad part of the day was the Grand Prix Cycles memorial ride for Steven Hart. I slept so late I took the car in. Our guesstimates of numbers for the ride varied.. maybe 200 or so with nibbles after. It was a very varied bunch.. and I got at least 2 dozen "how did you know Steven" I met some old mates. And TheotherActiveFeetGuy from BV forums. It was not so sad as all that actually. He touched a lot of people. RIP Steven. Life is fragile. Being missed is not so bad





Team Splat did track tonight. All 3 riders currently on the books. The gorgeous Sally back from her world travels finally made an appearance. And the Lovely Jenny.. still getting her mind back together after her nasty crash last year not only came .. but rode on a wooden olympic velo. And its only a couple of months since that scared the living daylights (not the original word I used here) out of me so I know exactly how much courage that took. I don,t think I can possibly describe how proud I am of her. She rode the full program too. Immensely proud of both girls. But Jenny beat her demons tonight so I don't think I will meet anyone as brave any time soon. She came around yesterday and we put new ABOC approved super sticky track tires on her bike and she was nervy then.. was waiting when I got to DISC and nervy then. And did just brilliantly.

A weirdness. That goes to it being a very very very small world indeed. One of the other girls at track was talking about her husband. Penny dropped. (no not that Penny. Yes her husband is a perfect notes client. And a good one. And possibly has a netbook for sale.. that might conceivably sort another issue. Amazing huh?

The last mountain

Its been an awesomely quiet week on the work front. Have done a lot of administration, organizing and promotional stuff but not much actual work. Really quite depressing. I have some bits and pieces of web dev to go on with.. and some of the same to do for ourselves and other things begin to look more organized but still. Blog hits continue to go up.. that is going much better, and the number of people looking at PerfectNotes from here is going up. Which is good. Its the only way I can justify this prodigious self serving ranting to my starving staff.

A couple of our clients are absolutely and totally flat out.. which makes me wonder why our local downturn. Its not such a complete downturn.. either, have had a dozen people or more ask for advice.. advice of the type that we cannot quite call consulting and charge for. Including one person wanting to talk about going from Thunderbird to Outlook. Can sum that bit of advice up pretty easy in one word, But it seems they were using a CRM package called ACT, Instead of ours. Sigh. And ACT cannot talk to IMAP. It needs Outlook. A reason to not use it right there I should think. Ahhh well. It turns out their is commercial software letting you turn IMAP to PST. And we have software of our own letting you go the other far more sensible way. So its all covered.

One of the things about proprietary software like MS Outlook is that it has its format for keeping data in. (PST) Athough PST supposedly subscribes to an open format no one else that I am aware uses it Getting it into another format to use with someone else's software is difficult and expensive.. Sometimes impossible. So once you have your 6 months worth of calendar stuff. email, business contacts and the like in Outlook its probably staying there. Welcome to the wonderful world of Microsoft, loyal Microsoft sl... er customer.

Kathy is off to Echuca. She says to explore possible Virtual Assistant customers. But I happen to know that their is a blues festival happening there this week. I suspect a connection.

Last night was the last mountain stage of the Tour de France. A bunch of us went to Blackburn Cycling Club and watched it live. About 15 of us this time. Bundled in blankets, watching it on the big(ish) screen. eating hot snacks.. Listening to Penny being soft. It was all good.

The stage was amazing Contador. knew his real danger was Schleck and stayed glued to his back wheel. He had to stay within 8 seconds.. and Schleck had to pull out.. realistically something like 30 seconds. Each attacked savagely up the last mountain Eventually each attack ended with Contador 6 inches behind Schleck and the peleton coming apart behind them. And that's how it finished. Contador 6 inches behind and 8 seconds ahead. Schleck winning the stage. Contador almost certainly winning the tour. Desperately hurting riders coming up the hill in dribs and drabs. The remainder of the main peleton down to maybe 20 riders some 5 or 6 minutes down. Armstrong still in with them. A great evening.

Tomorrow I shall expand on my opinion of the Melbourne Bike Hire Scheme. Wonder if the Age will post my comment.

Sometimes you’re the nail.

Wow, that was nail biting stuff on the tour last night. A desperate brave solo breakaway by Carlos Barredo who was hunted down and caught.. and passed, exhausted and broken within the last kilometer, And in the breakaway that hunted him down... attack after attack launched up the steep heartbreaking slopes of the four Pyreneean summits the stage took in on the way to Pau Armstrong prominent in that bunch, riding strongly with his trademark impassive face, responding to the attacks and launching a serious dig or two off his own... and at the end. while probably the poorest sprinter in the bunch, he managed a sprint.

He did not win.. few fairy tales in the tour... its way too tough and brutal for that. But he hung with the leaders in a day long breakaway in the toughest of the mountain stages, and finished sixth. Its likely the last bit of greatness we will see from Lance... but it was superb. No one can really doubt that he is going down fighting and showing style. He once said "No gifts" and no one is giving him any, that is for sure.

Pierrick Fédrigo of France won the stage. But sorry Pierrick.. but no one cares. Armstrong got sixth... that is what everyone is going to remember.

Armstrong commented after his early crash that dropped him out of overall tour contention that "Sometimes you are the hammer and sometimes you are the nail" Well a lot of people have been hammered this tour...Renshaw out.. Evans back with the main bunch and ever further out of contention.. nearly every one in the peleton missing skin or nursing broken bones of greater or lesser consequence in what might become known as the 'tour of the crash' Its really wonderful to see Lance go out with style.

I was going to comment on Contador's unsporting behavior in attacking, and indeed taking yellow while Andy Schleck was having a mechanical issue the other day. But I think I already have. If Alberto wins the one thing he won't be able to say is that he won it without any gifts. Well he will be able to say it of course.. and modesty is not Alberto's best thing so he will say it loudly and often. But its just not true. Interestingly he has since apologized. I suspect that while he is not going to admit it he feels the same way I think the boos when he got yellow were probably a serious slap across the face. He deserved them IMO. But rumor says he is a nice bloke and smart, so hopefully he learned something

Ok yesterday was a group mentoring meeting at Box Hill Tafe yesterday afternoon Some useful point came out of it.. and I have been playing with this blog and will be playing with the website a lot doing Search Engine Optimization stuff. We generally do OK at that stuff.. but some useful suggestions came out of the meeting. One issue that Kathy had pointed out the other day is that while the blog is taking on a life of its own with a steady increase in readership the people concerned are not going to our business website. Which is Perfectnotes.com.au So go and visit it now. I am attempting to address this issue.

Another issue is that my style is a bit idiosyncratic. This blog is about half business blog.. and half cycling blog.. it works for me.. its how I like to write and this blog is at least partially about me liking to write. Its less polished business site than it could be. That is by design.. i think this sort of style is far less formal.. and it is at least partially about me as a person and us as nice people who will try pretty hard for the customer. I mean I don.t want to be a company like Telstra. A Telstra blog would have no soul. And they absolutely will not go that extra mile.. or even two cm for you. But a Telstra blog would be polished. So I could do polished if I want to. But if I do its going to be because someone has hired me to do polished for them. But it does mean that doing tags on content in my posts is an issue.. I mean is this a cycling post or is it one about SEO? And how many people are out their searching for posts on Cycling Search Engine Optimisation? Having a multitasking blog is tricky.

SEO needs frequent revisiting tho. Its a work in progress. As any web site should be. Another issue we have at the moment is that currently the blog is a wordpress site but the website is not. In the fullness of time the web site will be hosted by us and running in Plone and we will host the blog on the same site. But how to deal with it in the intern is an issue.

Bought print cartridges from France this morning. A lot cheaper than local. But then again its harder to sort a warranty issue. Kathy asked how long they were likely to take to get here. Well, its a mystery. But the last time I bought stuff from the UK it took less time to get here than the last time I bought stuff from Sydney. Such a small fragile world. I shall have to devote some more time to think about the election. Cannot help but think the world is too fragile to trust to pollies.

This group mentoring thing was run by Georg who I have mentioned previously as having a nice little financial software package called Finetunebiz Cashbook.that is probably a good fit for lots of small businesses worldwide. He has carefully stayed away from making it country specific and is pretty much targeting the user currently using a shoebox to manage their finances. He was really happy to see us as I had mentioned that I liked his bit of software and his analytic's program had picked up on it. So here is another little rev for him. I do think that the success of Perfectnotes is totally dependent on how well we network.. so this is me networking. In spite of all too many interruptions by the staff.

Rest day.

And about time. Badly needed. Shattered riders thank you.
The blokes on the tour probably need a break too :D .

On the training front I managed a run today. 3 km. It will do. Now running regularly. Its a start

On the work front I have now firmly established that the print cartridge in my laser printer, (brand new out of the box) is buggered, but sadly it was bought years ago ... and I cannot find the invoice. Seriously annoying. A replacement cartridge for this printer is around $350... time for Fleabay I think

And speaking of Ebay the spare car finally is on ebay after one prospective purchaser stuffed me around.. sheesh its not like I am asking for real money for the thing. And a second purchaser decided it needed too much work.. fair enough, cannot argue with that. Anyway hopefully its a good deal for someone and it goes to a good home. Otherwise it goes to a scrapyard. Anyway it goes.

My mate Alaina posted on facebook today that she was eating breakfast in a cafe on Southbank London that we had eaten in last trip. How cool is that? and she is living only a few hundred metres from there. It really really is a small world.

Lots of interest and a little bit of work on the Virtual Assistant stuff. I think that Kathy has a great idea here. Its going to fly.

The wind the other day was intense. Our roof actually survived but Kornang Creek bike path has a tree down across it. A big gum that has come down roots and all. On my trip into town I did note only 2 petrol powered vehicles on the bike path. An all time low. The average is usually 4 or 5 and the maximum so far has been 8 Mind you both of these were 4WD,s . Cos you need a 4WD to drive on a bike path. If you cannot ride a bicycle that is.

We finally have tires. Jenny ordered from Ribble I think it was... and astonishingly they put the tires in the mail and the things turned up. Nothing at all like our experience with Bike Bits Suck. Which you have read about previously. See people.. some companies out their do actually do right by the customers. These are the ones to deal with more than once.

My commute back yesterday was great fun. I met uteman. Had the seat all the way back.. so that his gut could fit in. Uteman seems to not like bicycles. And I see his point. They sure don;t like him. I cannot see to many bicycles not collapsing under his weight. But if he found one. ... and used it a bit.. maybe he could sit in a less grand prix position in his ute. Uteman thinks blokes wearing lycra look silly. Uteman does not own a mirror.

Tonight lets hope Lance and Cadel can pull something special out of the bag. And lets hope that tomorrow something happens and I can do a better blog.

Cadel in yellow.

This might be a shorter than usual post. Lacking energy. Need coffee in huge amounts. Somewhat buggered.

Track last night. Poor gear selection saw me not hanging on for 8 lap flat out efforts. On 81 or so gear inches I was spinning my heart out. Totally being blown away by Janine (who to be fair is improving heaps), over the distance in our pretend pursuit. I went up to 84 and did better than that.. really needed my 15. And finally borrowed a 15 from Carl and was back to sore legs.. being able to breath and being able to hang on for a few laps. On about 89. A good gear for me. Sprinters cough later. Hacking bits of rarely used lung onto the floor. I am certainly no spinner and its a tough way to learn. Not overly happy with my effort but hey. Next week.

My 15 is ( I think) on the gorgeous Sally's bike. Lead rider for Team Splat my last contact with Sally was a cryptic message the other day to the effect that she is in love with an orangutan at Singapore zoo. I may not get my 15 back for a while

My mate Ian finally came along and had a great time. Ian is a bit er special. When I smashed my hip and everyone came and saw me in hospital and bought flowers, he bought scotch. You hang onto mates like that. Jenny came along to watch and get inspired. Having ridden into the fence at Blackburn she has a couple of demons to beat. Oh I know those demons. On friday one of the blokes rode onto the while line at the base of the fence at DISC....... and must have brushed the fence with his elbow... thats a long way up. I had my heart in my mouth.....apparently frightened Jenny too. Hmmm

Then home.... Significant other had cooked dinner. Then we set off to pick up Carl and go to Blacky and watch the tour. Just around the corner a possum had been hit and just in the middle of the road. What gets me is the asshole who hit it and just left if there would probably consider me a cruel basket because I have been known to kill my own dinner. I stopped.. SO went back to get it out of the middle of the road. Came back crying. It had a dead baby with it. Sigh. Some people are in fact ar$$es. And some of those don't even know it. Or care.

Blackburn was great. The minimal yet elite crowd meant we could and did crap on about anything and everything. SO and Carl have rallying in common.. my rallying career while fun was far from successful although I did OK ish with motokhanas and the like. Lots of nibbles. Muffins.. chocky cake. Mmmmmm. The tour itself was great. Cadel in yellow. at the end of the day. Armstong probably out of it ... i will be very surprised if he was not badly hurt in that first crash. I am thinking cracked rib or something. Andy Schleck winning the stage in a great sprint finish. He has to be the best chance to win the Tour I think. No way could Cadel match his accelerations up the hill. Cadel is no sprinter. Andy turns out to be able to sprint... and do it more than once.

Been reading a blog from one of the bosses of my mate Sara. About his rather bad face plant. At least I have better luck with dentists than him. Is a small world hey.

Oh and I still have not got that UPS sorted. Next job. More later

Le Tour

Sleepless nights followed by sleepless nights. Evans going well. A nice bloke Cadel. Fingers crossed. A certain Brit 200 meter specialist. probably the fastest bloke in the world over 200 meters, has answered a few questions about his ability in no uncertain terms. Two astonishingly fast wins in a row.

A fun time of the year. Cuts into the sleep but. Tomorrow night a few of us will be watching the race live at Blackburn CC Clubrooms. Freezing and eating nibbles.

One of the nice things about cycling is that you do get to meet your hero's. Tho I am not sure Cadel Evans is blogging about meeting Percrime. Never mind. Anyway its club level cycling that is the source of future champions. Our equivalent of the Tour. Last night was the first ever ABOC sprint series race at DISC. I don;t know if anyone who reads this blog came along (except for Kathy and Jenny who both came to watch. No idea if Penny reads it... tho she watched and then came home and ate with us (we can afford to feed Penny... eats less than the cat but is more fussy if that's possible)

I was working in at Monash and heh.. sprinted out to DISC from the city. The roads were seriously full of loons. You can pick Friday evening peak hour just because they usually release the inmates from the asylum for the weekends. Near head on in little Lonsdale st with a car going the wrong way down the one way street Watched a scooter rider nearly get clobbered in Wellington St when the Hiace she was passing decided that the traffic was too heavy and turning right was the go. Neither looking or indicating were possibilities, turning the wheel was the limit of his competence. Watched a bloke stop for a green light.. also on Wellington... wait 50 seconds and then take off just as the light turned red. Had a woman nearly drive into my leg through a stop sign on Station st at 1 kmh as she tried to force her way into the stopped traffic.

Ahhh yes... speed is the biggest killer on our roads according the telly. I would have thought it was not looking and/or inconsiderate stupidity And I remain firmly convinced that we need the death penalty reintroduced. For all the tools who stop at the lights.. wait for the light change and then put the indicator on.

Anyway the Sprint series was great. Only 13 riders.. Carl was disappointed but you know small starts and all. The racing was great. I was actually asked to race.. but I was there on a road bike.. don.t have a current full license and would have been slowest by a long long way. They were quick. I got to marshal instead. This is going to be a great series. That Emily is going to make the Olympics if she wants too. She is at the age where she may not manage the commitment... then again. But I hope to see her win gold. Looking forward to the next one. Will do a link to the video,s when they are up.

Edit. Here is heat 1

My chest from Moe got sorted out. I went and got it Friday morning. Left at about 6:00. Foggy drive. Going though Warragul (where I and a good few pretty good cyclists were born) the fog was down to about 200 meters. Ended up in this weird surreal paceline of cars. Everyone watching the taillights in front. The driver on the back would decide everyone was crawling.. pull out and blast past everyone at warp one.. and then suddenly reach the front and discover they could see nothing and it was not so easy without tailights to follow.. They would pull left and brake until they were going a little slower than the line had been going. You get exactly the same thing when riders discover that punching a hole in the wind is tougher than wheelsucking. And go to the front and slow it all down. Sigh. So this kept happening and we kept going slower. Some dumb people out there.

But the chest was as advertised and looks very nice in my office. Thanking you marnieb. Now I need bookshelves. Dark wood.. many shelves.

Oh I meant to say. Sundays track left me tasting blood. Unlike Wednesday's dentist. Which was scarey and horrible.. and will be the last for a while. Which is all about me cos it didn't hurt and I did not taste blood. But my profound gratitude to my dentist who is a fan and will read this. Been very lucky with dentists who will put up with me.. dealing with dentists is very far from my best thing.. and I want them to know that they are appreciated.

OK this weekends work. Try and get UPS monitoring software running remotely on one client site. Do a new Adwords campaign for our Virtual Assistant stuff. Go for a run. Not riding today.. Bit concerned the roof is going to blow off.

Have been looking at a couple of blogs running that are connected with business. Its the same problem.. hard to find the time to do it.. so they just do not get updated. Started with the best of intentions.. but its a problem. Perhaps I could offer updating blogs as a Perfectnotes service? Any comments.

Small world innit?

Today was our monthly Box Hill TAFE organized Networking night. I was in the city and rode in and met Kathy there. The topic was an interesting look at the person presenting its own little bit of small business cash management software. Finetunebiz Cashbook. Runs on windows... and has a complicated authentication setup but does seem a thoroughly decent bit of software. Runs on what essentially is an excell spreadsheet which is nice.

A girl came up afterwords.. who hit me with the classic.. "you don,t remember me do you" "Alas... there have been so many...." Nah I managed nothing as 'stylish' as that. A student at Swinnie when I was there.. now starting a small business doing oil paintings and web design. Her name was Kate.. and while (amazingly ) I actually remember her last name, I think putting it here not appropriate

I gave her Kathys card as with brilliant forward planning I had none on me. I can see her being a useful contact. Actually I can see a couple of useful contacts coming out of the night. Kathy had a solid half dozen inquiries about her virtual assistant offering. All looking very very promising after a lack lustre start to the week.

In keeping with my plan to do a very local leaflet drop I have done a very local leaflet. What do you think?


I decided the back office has to be more organized. Went looking on Ebay for bookcases.. with no luck.. nothing local and immediate for money I was willing to pay. Also went looking for a chest. Something to put the large pile of rarely used but valuable motorcycle leathers and helmets in. Found a nice one.. In Moe. Which is a bit of a bummer. Decided it was worth one bid. Bid $66. One and only bid. Won as I often seem too. That was Sunday evening. Still have not heard from 'marnieb' Ok there are actually a lot of legitimate possibilities why this might be the case. However I may rethink this buying from Moe thing. Let us wait and see.

Dentist tomorrow. Oh joy. I like 'my' dentist.. but generically ... mmmm... dentists. Phobic and don,t care who knows it. Got rung at like 6:30 by her assistant.. nurse... dental technician.. receptionist.. I don.t actually know the job description.. but one of her people. To see if I had fled the country. Sigh.

Weekends are for..

Racing.. and training. ABOC's winter Sunday track session this evening was a killer. Intervals, lots of intervals, all indoors on wood at DISC. I was not the slowest..so called enduro.. closer to being the slowest than the fastest though. Worked my butt off. Still coughing up garbage from deepest rarely used recesses of my lungs, eating everything in the house and have the taste of blood in my mouth.

On the plus side.. finally actually started running again after a 2 month break (I actually ran out of usable running shoes) on Thursday. Sore back Friday.. sorer back yesterday and today... Which is just the price you pay for stopping an exercise and starting it up again, I know that. Back is not sore any more. Or alternatively the rest of me hurts so bad I am past noticing it. Whatever. It works :D

Did some paceline too. Almost did a half decent job of holding a wheel. Boy am I happy with myself

If you want to see some real track sprinting ABOC is holding an invitational at 6:30 PM next Friday the 9th of July. I,ll be a spectator or maybe helping out.. all the riders will be a lot quicker than me. Its at the indoor Velodrome at Darebin International Sports Centre which is DISC So come and have a look if you are in Melbourne and the teeniest bit interested in track

Over the weekend a friend gave me a brilliant idea. Well hopefully it will turn out to be a brilliant idea. We are not wildly interested in doing tech support for just people as opposed to companies... tends to pay less.. and be more troublesome. Its also not rocket science.. the issues are not complex and we have lots of bargain basement competition.. including a good number of perfectly competent teenagers.

But on the other hand.. if the week is slow and the work is nearby why not? It might lead to business work in the way that a lot of our business work does lead to us doing tech support for the same people at home, and that has worked well for us. So while the school holidays are on, lets do a local leaflet drop, pushing the 'school holiday special' thing and see if we can chase up a few more customers near PerfectNotes HQ. Good idea? Here's hoping.

OK the Tour is on... have to go watch. Cheers.

Wins and losses

Followers of PerfectNotes people on Facebook (and that page needs to start being updated daily) will have noticed that Kathy... everyone's favorite developer, has had a win recently. We were approached by another IT company... a city based operation, with gorgeous offices, to see if we could do something for them. And the proof of concept of this works

It was this carefully unnamed company,s technical people that approached us. They are running a mainly windows operation, using IIS as a web server on a Windows 2007 server. What they wanted to do was , to simplify as much as possible for non technical readers, to run a customized Linux web server that runs a thing called Cyn.in which

Cyn.in is a collaboration software that inter-connects your people with each other and their collective knowledge, seamlessly.

and have it appear to the rest of the world as if that software was running on their Windows server. They needed to have it all work seamlessly with various media, and of course have no security issues.

While testing the concept our network at Perfectnotes grew substantially but only in a virtual sense. We now have a windows machine.. duel booting a windows enterprise server and barely managing at that. We have a couple of virtual machines running Cyn.in. On real machines running various things. And I have spent some time sorting all that out. But it all works. Is a major win. Very very cool.

Whats not so cool is that Stephen Hart, the owner of Grand Prix Bicycles, a shop in GlenHuntly road in I think Caulfield was killed on the holiday of a lifetime while bicycle touring in Italy. I don,t want to go into details.. but it would appear things went wrong on a mountain descent and it was all over in a moment. Just one of those things. I only met Stephen once or twice... but the shop and he have a great reputation and its a sad loss. I cannot but think its not a bad way to go, quickly while doing something you love, on the holiday of a lifetime but he leaves a wife, friends and co workers and it has to be unbearably horrible for them

I firmly believe that cycling is not a risky sport although there are stupid nongs who do their very best to make it so. I have not lost close friends cycling as I have through motorcycling. But things like this do bring it home. CCCC report on it all here There will be a memorial ride shortly.