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.
Showing posts with label IT support. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IT support. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
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.
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.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Happy Birthday to Perfect Notes!
Today Perfect Notes turns 1.
We have officially been in business for a year. Thanks to everyone who has followed us on this journey - and to all those who have helped, whether you are customers, prospects, connections or friends - thank you!
In actual fact, we started doing business before 15/10/09, but that's the official start date - so today is well worth celebrating - and it's a Friday too!
Well, it's been an interesting journey so far. While we have not continued down the path we started on a year ago, this looks like a sustainable business direction, so we will stay on this one for at least the next 6 months - unless someone drops a brick in our way again, in which case we will roll with the punches and change focus again.
One lovely thing about this celebration is that most of the customers who started this journey with us are still customers - so that tells me we are definitely doing something right. While a couple have gone out of business, or moved into areas where we can no longer assist them, only a few have decided to use others to do the work we started doing for them - a positive thing.
Oh - and we have managed to pick up some more along the way, as well. :-)
So - please feel free to comment on the things you like about our business - and how you will help us celebrate this milestone.
We have officially been in business for a year. Thanks to everyone who has followed us on this journey - and to all those who have helped, whether you are customers, prospects, connections or friends - thank you!
In actual fact, we started doing business before 15/10/09, but that's the official start date - so today is well worth celebrating - and it's a Friday too!
Well, it's been an interesting journey so far. While we have not continued down the path we started on a year ago, this looks like a sustainable business direction, so we will stay on this one for at least the next 6 months - unless someone drops a brick in our way again, in which case we will roll with the punches and change focus again.
One lovely thing about this celebration is that most of the customers who started this journey with us are still customers - so that tells me we are definitely doing something right. While a couple have gone out of business, or moved into areas where we can no longer assist them, only a few have decided to use others to do the work we started doing for them - a positive thing.
Oh - and we have managed to pick up some more along the way, as well. :-)
So - please feel free to comment on the things you like about our business - and how you will help us celebrate this milestone.
Monday, October 11, 2010
PerfectNotes is a sprinter.
OK a D grade sprinter. But absolutely not an 'also ran'. More on that later. First some stuff on the business.
A fair bit of work on at the moment. Its nearly crunch time to decide on the expansion into Bendigo... I have to give that a lot of thought. One thing is that we really need 2 cars all the time now.. and maybe even three. Thats for the core team of Kathy and I. We also need to give thought to bringing one of our part timers.. or subcontractors I guess they really are.. on board permanently.. I don't think we are quite their yet.. but soon.. very soon.
My depression over the business and stuff of a technical nature getting on top of me is pretty much over. After a few weeks when the simplest of jobs got silly annoying and nothing went right. I guess we all have those weeks..at least I hope so. Just this Sony to sort and that will be sorted. I have some VPN issues to work through for at least 3 clients next but I am looking forward to that. Its starting to be fun again.
We have a probable 3 sites more for web development. And one for certain. On top of some ongoing development.. A stack of VA stuff to do. Out of our trips to Bendigo we have at the very least established a relationship with a business embroiderer.. screen printer, a proof reader (for sub contracting VA stuff) a business coaching company and a variety of others. We have done some significant work for our client at Pyalong.. probably enough to pay for the trips. And we have had some fun. And scored a business coaching session for Kathy and I . Woot. So far so good. And last week was quite busy in its own right.
But life cannot be all about work. And none of this is the reason I find myself so happy.
The ABOC Summer Sprint Series started off with round 1 yesterday And as previously mentioned all three Team Splat! riders entered. Some last minute kerfuffles had to be sorted out with race licences and we thank Rob of Blackburn Cycling Club. The event was run at Blackburn Velodrome about 5 km away and I am pretty sure not actually in Blackburn. The Velo was pristine.. with the holes filled in and the lines freshly marked. The weather was perfect. It was a magical day for what amounts to my return to real rather than play racing after 30 odd years.
Team Splat settled in well, Getting pretty good at making ourselves at home at racetracks
And I won. In fact I won D grade. Really! Its true. I did. See... here are the results. I even wound up 5th in the aggregate points So a great day. Way to get lifted out of my funk.
Sally got second.. making it a Team Splat! 1/2 And while Jenny missed out on third .. which would have been the perfect result she did very well and showed a lot of potential. She won one of her races and tried her heart out in the rest.
The day started with flying 200's to determine grade and seed order. I tried pretty hard but flying 200,s are not my best thing.. I did,t enter flat out.. and in the bottom curve I backed off slightly and let the bike up out of the sprinters lane. A fairly average effort. I was 0.7 seconds slower than Sally... and fractionally faster than Janine V who had never even ridden at Blackburn before. When the seeding was done we had 6 in D grade.. a clear second separated D grades fastest rider.. Sally :D from the slowest rider in C: Obviously everyones standard has lifted.
I,ll only talk about the D grade racing.. some of the rest was blisteringly fast and close... but you know I can only rave so much. Its great spectating tho... come along.
First up Sally against Janine M. Sally a seasoned racer now.. Janine M a newbie... They rolled around for a lap.. Sally turned on the taps.. it was all over.. Then me vs Jenny in a Team Splat! double. Jenny lead out.. and I rolled around behind her for the first lap..pointedly staying in her blind spot and forcing her to look for me just as we had trained the day before. Going into the last curve on lap one.. I ducked under her.. went hard.. realised I was well clear and backed off to save myself for later. Legs feeling much better by now. The last D grade race.. Janine V.. fast and dangerous..vs Penny.. "training is for other people" Robinson. Result not a big surprise.
Round 2 Sally vs Janine V. The sprint started late with Janine getting the jump.. Sally got herself together.. chased hard .. closed.. closed more.. Janine visibly tiring and.... Sally ran out of time to catch her.
Me vs Janine M. I thought this one would be pretty easy... but some how... really early she jumped.. got 5 metres. I thought she had to be nuts to try and nail me that far out but hey.. I chased, got her wheel with a lap to go. Meh.. no advantage to being on her wheel.. a garden rake would make a bigger hole in the air. I went around on the outside.... backed off.. and took the win. Apparently she had followed Swervin Merv's advice to go early because Dave doesn't last. Thanks Merv, I owe you a beer.
Jenny vs Penny "My eyelash hurts and so I cannot train" Robinson. Blood on the velodrome. Jenny is looking pretty dangerous. She went really late.. jumped Penny on the bell lap and blew her away.
Round 3. Sally vs Jenny. Another Team Splat! double. Jenny is at her best over distance.. Sally over maybe 250 metres. The later it starts the better. I told Jenny to go early. Sally to go late. :D. Sally listened. Sally wins.
Me vs Janine V. Ummmmmm. A real threat. I wanted to go as early as possible.. I though I could get the jump because she didn't want that sort of race and was not tactically good enough to stop me jumping. I was leading out. Half way to the start (did I mention that they were rolling starts?) Janine said she could not get her foot in.. Suspiciously I looked sideways at her.. then she said it was in as we rolled over the start line.. I looked at the start official to make sure it was a clean start.. glanced at Janine.. and jumped.. into the first corner. Won by a long way. I did not expect that to be so easy. Burned more berries than I really needed.
Janine vs Penny "Training is for wimps" R. Janine.. by about a year.
So me vs Sally for 1st and 2nd in D. Janine V vs Janine M for 3rd. With the Janines going first. I thought Janine V much the stronger rider here.. with Janine M,s best bet being to go early and hope Janine V would blow up. Felt sorry for the commentators on this one. In the end both riders started the sprint very very late.. and Janine V easily won it.
So a Team Splat! ride off for first and second. Now while I am consistently faster than Sally in training I would never underestimate her. She is a fighter all the way down to the wire.. always finishes a race day faster than she started it and learns fast. I also dont think she has actually figured out how to accelerate really hard.. I think she has lots more acceleration in those legs and just has to sus out how to turn it on. Just my luck for her to manage it now. And I want the win. I decide again to play to my strengths .. and go very early.. I can hear the commentator saying "Dave likes to go early but its a lot different going early in a 3 lap race than in a 2 lap race, he may regret it if he tries that" Meh. Wanna bet?
I hook under Sally and go on the second turn.. grab 4 meters.. she chases... and on the second lap I can feel her there. I stay just outside the sprinters lane to give me options.. but I can see her back there in the sprinters lane.. coming up.. I jump into the lane and grit my teeth. Sally fades as we enter the third lap.. and I hang on for the win.
Woot.
Happy Dave.
A link to the videos of the races at Blackburn on Sunday last. Where D grade was dominated by Team Splat!
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=383E6B49E7D9C8E6
If you want to know anything more about the Blackburn series or track racing generally by all means email us
A fair bit of work on at the moment. Its nearly crunch time to decide on the expansion into Bendigo... I have to give that a lot of thought. One thing is that we really need 2 cars all the time now.. and maybe even three. Thats for the core team of Kathy and I. We also need to give thought to bringing one of our part timers.. or subcontractors I guess they really are.. on board permanently.. I don't think we are quite their yet.. but soon.. very soon.
My depression over the business and stuff of a technical nature getting on top of me is pretty much over. After a few weeks when the simplest of jobs got silly annoying and nothing went right. I guess we all have those weeks..at least I hope so. Just this Sony to sort and that will be sorted. I have some VPN issues to work through for at least 3 clients next but I am looking forward to that. Its starting to be fun again.
We have a probable 3 sites more for web development. And one for certain. On top of some ongoing development.. A stack of VA stuff to do. Out of our trips to Bendigo we have at the very least established a relationship with a business embroiderer.. screen printer, a proof reader (for sub contracting VA stuff) a business coaching company and a variety of others. We have done some significant work for our client at Pyalong.. probably enough to pay for the trips. And we have had some fun. And scored a business coaching session for Kathy and I . Woot. So far so good. And last week was quite busy in its own right.
But life cannot be all about work. And none of this is the reason I find myself so happy.
The ABOC Summer Sprint Series started off with round 1 yesterday And as previously mentioned all three Team Splat! riders entered. Some last minute kerfuffles had to be sorted out with race licences and we thank Rob of Blackburn Cycling Club. The event was run at Blackburn Velodrome about 5 km away and I am pretty sure not actually in Blackburn. The Velo was pristine.. with the holes filled in and the lines freshly marked. The weather was perfect. It was a magical day for what amounts to my return to real rather than play racing after 30 odd years.
Team Splat settled in well, Getting pretty good at making ourselves at home at racetracks
And I won. In fact I won D grade. Really! Its true. I did. See... here are the results. I even wound up 5th in the aggregate points So a great day. Way to get lifted out of my funk.
Sally got second.. making it a Team Splat! 1/2 And while Jenny missed out on third .. which would have been the perfect result she did very well and showed a lot of potential. She won one of her races and tried her heart out in the rest.
The day started with flying 200's to determine grade and seed order. I tried pretty hard but flying 200,s are not my best thing.. I did,t enter flat out.. and in the bottom curve I backed off slightly and let the bike up out of the sprinters lane. A fairly average effort. I was 0.7 seconds slower than Sally... and fractionally faster than Janine V who had never even ridden at Blackburn before. When the seeding was done we had 6 in D grade.. a clear second separated D grades fastest rider.. Sally :D from the slowest rider in C: Obviously everyones standard has lifted.
I,ll only talk about the D grade racing.. some of the rest was blisteringly fast and close... but you know I can only rave so much. Its great spectating tho... come along.
First up Sally against Janine M. Sally a seasoned racer now.. Janine M a newbie... They rolled around for a lap.. Sally turned on the taps.. it was all over.. Then me vs Jenny in a Team Splat! double. Jenny lead out.. and I rolled around behind her for the first lap..pointedly staying in her blind spot and forcing her to look for me just as we had trained the day before. Going into the last curve on lap one.. I ducked under her.. went hard.. realised I was well clear and backed off to save myself for later. Legs feeling much better by now. The last D grade race.. Janine V.. fast and dangerous..vs Penny.. "training is for other people" Robinson. Result not a big surprise.
Round 2 Sally vs Janine V. The sprint started late with Janine getting the jump.. Sally got herself together.. chased hard .. closed.. closed more.. Janine visibly tiring and.... Sally ran out of time to catch her.
Me vs Janine M. I thought this one would be pretty easy... but some how... really early she jumped.. got 5 metres. I thought she had to be nuts to try and nail me that far out but hey.. I chased, got her wheel with a lap to go. Meh.. no advantage to being on her wheel.. a garden rake would make a bigger hole in the air. I went around on the outside.... backed off.. and took the win. Apparently she had followed Swervin Merv's advice to go early because Dave doesn't last. Thanks Merv, I owe you a beer.
Jenny vs Penny "My eyelash hurts and so I cannot train" Robinson. Blood on the velodrome. Jenny is looking pretty dangerous. She went really late.. jumped Penny on the bell lap and blew her away.
Round 3. Sally vs Jenny. Another Team Splat! double. Jenny is at her best over distance.. Sally over maybe 250 metres. The later it starts the better. I told Jenny to go early. Sally to go late. :D. Sally listened. Sally wins.
Me vs Janine V. Ummmmmm. A real threat. I wanted to go as early as possible.. I though I could get the jump because she didn't want that sort of race and was not tactically good enough to stop me jumping. I was leading out. Half way to the start (did I mention that they were rolling starts?) Janine said she could not get her foot in.. Suspiciously I looked sideways at her.. then she said it was in as we rolled over the start line.. I looked at the start official to make sure it was a clean start.. glanced at Janine.. and jumped.. into the first corner. Won by a long way. I did not expect that to be so easy. Burned more berries than I really needed.
Janine vs Penny "Training is for wimps" R. Janine.. by about a year.
So me vs Sally for 1st and 2nd in D. Janine V vs Janine M for 3rd. With the Janines going first. I thought Janine V much the stronger rider here.. with Janine M,s best bet being to go early and hope Janine V would blow up. Felt sorry for the commentators on this one. In the end both riders started the sprint very very late.. and Janine V easily won it.
So a Team Splat! ride off for first and second. Now while I am consistently faster than Sally in training I would never underestimate her. She is a fighter all the way down to the wire.. always finishes a race day faster than she started it and learns fast. I also dont think she has actually figured out how to accelerate really hard.. I think she has lots more acceleration in those legs and just has to sus out how to turn it on. Just my luck for her to manage it now. And I want the win. I decide again to play to my strengths .. and go very early.. I can hear the commentator saying "Dave likes to go early but its a lot different going early in a 3 lap race than in a 2 lap race, he may regret it if he tries that" Meh. Wanna bet?
I hook under Sally and go on the second turn.. grab 4 meters.. she chases... and on the second lap I can feel her there. I stay just outside the sprinters lane to give me options.. but I can see her back there in the sprinters lane.. coming up.. I jump into the lane and grit my teeth. Sally fades as we enter the third lap.. and I hang on for the win.
Woot.
Happy Dave.
A link to the videos of the races at Blackburn on Sunday last. Where D grade was dominated by Team Splat!
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=383E6B49E7D9C8E6
If you want to know anything more about the Blackburn series or track racing generally by all means email us
Friday, October 1, 2010
5 hours on the ring road. Insane.
And again this post is slightly overdue. It has been a very very busy week and so I do have some excuse. Its also been a confusing week.. I am going to use this blog post to try and put it all into some sorta perspective.S
On Monday my friend Robyn came back from her trip to Europe where she stayed with the gorgeous Sara. Sara is the best Mac person I know. And lives in London. If their are really good Mac people in Melbourne they have thus far successfully hidden from me. Expensive Mac people now... them we have. In all honesty I am one of the best Mac people in Melbourne and its not even my area of expertise (tho like a lot of techs my prefered laptop is a Macbook) but I am way cheaper per hour than Mac people generally charge.
Kathy and I were tasked to pick her up from Tullamarine which we duly did and then.... turned the cars nose north rather than south east. This came as a slight shock to Robyn. Evil snicker. Who was trapped in the back seat of her own lancer and comparing its roominess unfavourably with economy class in a 747. Certainly it was a cruel end to 20 hours in the air.
We arrived at mutual friends in the little town of Pyalong and lobbed on them for the night. One of these friends is my favorite niece the gorgeous Littlemissscribble. We had a pleasant night and then in the morning Kathy and I continued into Bendigo for a 7:00 am meeting with a networking group.
The group is a thing called BNI Business Networking International Its essentially a paid for and structured networking setup. You should look at their website for a better explanation. Its a successful attempt to structure the undoubted power of networking. Groups are everywhere. But as to this meeting being in Bendigo.. Kathy is looking at us expanding in that direction. My dad was bought up in Bendigo. I spent much of my youth there. Bendigo is a cycling town. Lake Cairn Curran where I used to sail is there. We have friends and customers in Pyalong which is more than halfway there. Its a reasonable thing to expand that way.
I personally think its just a tad early in the life of Perfect Notes. But maybe I am being too conservative. The meeting on Tuesday with an established group went well and we decided to return on Thursday. Back to Pyalong. Visit a customer. Say goodbye to Littlemissscribble et al... and off to Melbourne. Where I returned Robbyn's lancer to her and sent her on her way.
And discovered my Subie was US. Definitely not up to the trip to Bendigo. It was using more water than petrol
So Wednesday I took it off to my brother. Who runs a work shop that fixes heavy diesel's in Thomastown. Mech-hyd repairs. We pulled the radiator and Ashley (my evil brother ) bundled it and me into my Lancer and set off for radiator repair guy in Yarraville. An hour plus on the ring road to get there. Argghhhh. My Lancer has been at Ashleys for the past 2 months waiting for a new engine. With a bit of work it has condescended to run on 3.5 cylinders but I have seen Le Mans race cars that have had a gentler life than a Lancer being used by my brother apparently as a daily driver. Poor little thing. I am far from sure we want it back. Its never going to be a nice tight fun little car again I suspect. Its going to be a worn out race car. And they are not as much fun as you might think.
Anyway radiator guy took one look at the radiator and said "How long you been doing Subies Ash?" Reassuring. I could not have recognised it as a radiator from a Subie. I am told I can pick it up at 3:30... not for very much cash. Good because I don't have much cash So.. back to the workshop.. another hour and a half.. up to the bank.. and hell time to go back to Yarraville Another hour +... the ring road is a joke.. if I could carry the radiator on a pushy I could average twice this speed. And this is a freeway... back.. just me driving my clagged out lancer on a road full of loonies who are covering more distance sideways in their frequent unindicated lane changes into nearly non existent gaps than they are actually traveling forward. At an average speed of 5 kph even though a couple of bursts of inexplicable movement had me up to 80 for a few brief moments. The car adds never show this sort of gridlock. Doing this daily would turn me into a homicidal maniac in short order, no wonder many drivers are so annoyed by happy cyclists sliding through the gridlock. Thank Deity of Choice I no longer drive for a living.
Alone in the workshop putting the Subie back together in the twilght.. back to PerfectNotes HQ and then off to Pyalong again. We stayed with a customer this time.. they had dinner for us when we got there. We like Flavourful Hydroponics. Nice people with a good product and good customers too. Thanks for the tomatos guys.
And on to Bendigo in the morning. Some great people in this networking group. Hi Katrin. And an ex army bloke visiting from Singapore. Just from the people there this is a winner. But does it make economic sense? I have not figured it out yet. All comments are welcome
The old Subaru is a lovely car to do this sort of trip with. It seems like its issues are solved or at least much improved. Its like an old falcon that handles. Very nice car. Not letting Ashley get his hands on this one.
Sorted the clients issues on the way home. Had another clients new printer to sort this morning. Its a huge plotter for doing advanced and very large charts. I got a lesson in driving it from the Cannon tech and now am up to date with the very cutting edge of this technology. This afternoon I crashed and burned. Watched the UCI world champs. So few spectators. Geelong has been such a nasty unfriendly city to the world cycling championships.. it made me stay away. And they will bleat that its been a failure. Unwelcoming gits. I now hear that some plan to sue for lost income. Fools. If it had been a footy match they would have been so on board. Hopefully the courts see them as the wankers they are. Let me add that some of the shops have in fact apparently been totally on board. Them I have some sympathy for. A city tainted by bogans IMO. Not a place I would even consider relocating or chasing work in.
Anyway Michael Matthews of Oz won the under 23 race. Woohoo. Great win. What a sprint. Star.
As I mentioned Sally and I did velodrome training last Sunday. Sally's husband took some pics. And so here are a couple to finish off this post.
Me, trying hard
Sally, 9 metres high.
On Monday my friend Robyn came back from her trip to Europe where she stayed with the gorgeous Sara. Sara is the best Mac person I know. And lives in London. If their are really good Mac people in Melbourne they have thus far successfully hidden from me. Expensive Mac people now... them we have. In all honesty I am one of the best Mac people in Melbourne and its not even my area of expertise (tho like a lot of techs my prefered laptop is a Macbook) but I am way cheaper per hour than Mac people generally charge.
Kathy and I were tasked to pick her up from Tullamarine which we duly did and then.... turned the cars nose north rather than south east. This came as a slight shock to Robyn. Evil snicker. Who was trapped in the back seat of her own lancer and comparing its roominess unfavourably with economy class in a 747. Certainly it was a cruel end to 20 hours in the air.
We arrived at mutual friends in the little town of Pyalong and lobbed on them for the night. One of these friends is my favorite niece the gorgeous Littlemissscribble. We had a pleasant night and then in the morning Kathy and I continued into Bendigo for a 7:00 am meeting with a networking group.
The group is a thing called BNI Business Networking International Its essentially a paid for and structured networking setup. You should look at their website for a better explanation. Its a successful attempt to structure the undoubted power of networking. Groups are everywhere. But as to this meeting being in Bendigo.. Kathy is looking at us expanding in that direction. My dad was bought up in Bendigo. I spent much of my youth there. Bendigo is a cycling town. Lake Cairn Curran where I used to sail is there. We have friends and customers in Pyalong which is more than halfway there. Its a reasonable thing to expand that way.
I personally think its just a tad early in the life of Perfect Notes. But maybe I am being too conservative. The meeting on Tuesday with an established group went well and we decided to return on Thursday. Back to Pyalong. Visit a customer. Say goodbye to Littlemissscribble et al... and off to Melbourne. Where I returned Robbyn's lancer to her and sent her on her way.
And discovered my Subie was US. Definitely not up to the trip to Bendigo. It was using more water than petrol
So Wednesday I took it off to my brother. Who runs a work shop that fixes heavy diesel's in Thomastown. Mech-hyd repairs. We pulled the radiator and Ashley (my evil brother ) bundled it and me into my Lancer and set off for radiator repair guy in Yarraville. An hour plus on the ring road to get there. Argghhhh. My Lancer has been at Ashleys for the past 2 months waiting for a new engine. With a bit of work it has condescended to run on 3.5 cylinders but I have seen Le Mans race cars that have had a gentler life than a Lancer being used by my brother apparently as a daily driver. Poor little thing. I am far from sure we want it back. Its never going to be a nice tight fun little car again I suspect. Its going to be a worn out race car. And they are not as much fun as you might think.
Anyway radiator guy took one look at the radiator and said "How long you been doing Subies Ash?" Reassuring. I could not have recognised it as a radiator from a Subie. I am told I can pick it up at 3:30... not for very much cash. Good because I don't have much cash So.. back to the workshop.. another hour and a half.. up to the bank.. and hell time to go back to Yarraville Another hour +... the ring road is a joke.. if I could carry the radiator on a pushy I could average twice this speed. And this is a freeway... back.. just me driving my clagged out lancer on a road full of loonies who are covering more distance sideways in their frequent unindicated lane changes into nearly non existent gaps than they are actually traveling forward. At an average speed of 5 kph even though a couple of bursts of inexplicable movement had me up to 80 for a few brief moments. The car adds never show this sort of gridlock. Doing this daily would turn me into a homicidal maniac in short order, no wonder many drivers are so annoyed by happy cyclists sliding through the gridlock. Thank Deity of Choice I no longer drive for a living.
Alone in the workshop putting the Subie back together in the twilght.. back to PerfectNotes HQ and then off to Pyalong again. We stayed with a customer this time.. they had dinner for us when we got there. We like Flavourful Hydroponics. Nice people with a good product and good customers too. Thanks for the tomatos guys.
And on to Bendigo in the morning. Some great people in this networking group. Hi Katrin. And an ex army bloke visiting from Singapore. Just from the people there this is a winner. But does it make economic sense? I have not figured it out yet. All comments are welcome
The old Subaru is a lovely car to do this sort of trip with. It seems like its issues are solved or at least much improved. Its like an old falcon that handles. Very nice car. Not letting Ashley get his hands on this one.
Sorted the clients issues on the way home. Had another clients new printer to sort this morning. Its a huge plotter for doing advanced and very large charts. I got a lesson in driving it from the Cannon tech and now am up to date with the very cutting edge of this technology. This afternoon I crashed and burned. Watched the UCI world champs. So few spectators. Geelong has been such a nasty unfriendly city to the world cycling championships.. it made me stay away. And they will bleat that its been a failure. Unwelcoming gits. I now hear that some plan to sue for lost income. Fools. If it had been a footy match they would have been so on board. Hopefully the courts see them as the wankers they are. Let me add that some of the shops have in fact apparently been totally on board. Them I have some sympathy for. A city tainted by bogans IMO. Not a place I would even consider relocating or chasing work in.
Anyway Michael Matthews of Oz won the under 23 race. Woohoo. Great win. What a sprint. Star.
As I mentioned Sally and I did velodrome training last Sunday. Sally's husband took some pics. And so here are a couple to finish off this post.
Me, trying hard
Sally, 9 metres high.
Monday, September 27, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, September 20, 2010
It lives Igor!
There has been a new twist in this saga of the dead laptop. Marky came over to have a look at the dismembered corpse on the autopsy table.. er workbench. Aside from pointing out that I need a bigger and better magnifying glass on a long flexible mount.. and yes I do, he said some actually useful stuff. Mark knows a bit more about the electronics than I and since all my attempts to actually find an engineer just lead to many suggestions to just replace the mother board. Nearly all of them from people totally technically not up to replacing this particular mother board. Anyway it led to a result.
Mark said.. "Hmm, I wonder if this track is supposed to be there" I peered through the magnifying glass at a solder track between a power transformer and a transistor on the power bus that was the size of a flake of dandruff. "Looks factory" I commented. Mark expressed some doubt. "Lets scrape it off and see" I suggested.. "Re soldering that is no problem. He did. We tested. Power lights and a BIOS screen. OK thats a way from actually having this machine running but hey...
So now I have a theory. This box had been dropped on the back right corner. That side of the frame had twisted out of alignment and broken the dvd player.. by moving it so it had no connection. I fixed all that then discovered a damaged cable.. and lifted the thing to get its model number. I think that in fixing all that I released a single dandruff speck sized flake of solder that managed to find exactly the one worst place to lodge itself. Wow. Its only a theory.. but it holds up and fits all the facts. Now to try reassembly of a really complex machine for which the company releases no manuals.. but yeah I can do that. Still don,t know if anything electronic is damaged but I have hopes.
So I didn't kill it. I feel much much happier about myself as a tech now. Depressed for a week over that. Wow. And now we go back to the client. But first lets see if I can get this machine running an OS.
EDIT... machine now boots.
I went looking for DDR1 ram yesterday for a client laptop. and found 2 sticks of1 Gb Kingston (manufacturer of quality RAM) RAM, at almost the last place I tried. That machine goes from a dog with 256 Mb ram to a decent useful machine for the cost of about $150.. Its a huge difference and probably the last upgrade that machine will ever have. As also detailed in this post the answer is indeed more RAM
FInally went and saw "Tomorrow when the war began" last night with Kathy and a couple of close friends. I was looking forward to this movie as detailed in this blog post And it lived very much up to the hype. I thought it was well done.. smart and rang true. It seemed to me to be very very faithful to the book. The hardware was right. The one criticism I have heard that was worrying was the absurdity of one bunch of kids fighting back against an invasion.. in the context of the book they were one bunch in one area amongst many instances of insurrection... but luckier, faster learning and more successful than most. And this turned out in the end to be the case in the movie as well.. they heard about other unluckier rebels and the RAAF put in a brief appearance. So the movie was very very good. I loved it. There were 7 books in the series and 3 books in another continuing series about the central character after the war.. where she had a few issues. This might turn into a fun movie franchise.
Mark said.. "Hmm, I wonder if this track is supposed to be there" I peered through the magnifying glass at a solder track between a power transformer and a transistor on the power bus that was the size of a flake of dandruff. "Looks factory" I commented. Mark expressed some doubt. "Lets scrape it off and see" I suggested.. "Re soldering that is no problem. He did. We tested. Power lights and a BIOS screen. OK thats a way from actually having this machine running but hey...
So now I have a theory. This box had been dropped on the back right corner. That side of the frame had twisted out of alignment and broken the dvd player.. by moving it so it had no connection. I fixed all that then discovered a damaged cable.. and lifted the thing to get its model number. I think that in fixing all that I released a single dandruff speck sized flake of solder that managed to find exactly the one worst place to lodge itself. Wow. Its only a theory.. but it holds up and fits all the facts. Now to try reassembly of a really complex machine for which the company releases no manuals.. but yeah I can do that. Still don,t know if anything electronic is damaged but I have hopes.
So I didn't kill it. I feel much much happier about myself as a tech now. Depressed for a week over that. Wow. And now we go back to the client. But first lets see if I can get this machine running an OS.
EDIT... machine now boots.
I went looking for DDR1 ram yesterday for a client laptop. and found 2 sticks of1 Gb Kingston (manufacturer of quality RAM) RAM, at almost the last place I tried. That machine goes from a dog with 256 Mb ram to a decent useful machine for the cost of about $150.. Its a huge difference and probably the last upgrade that machine will ever have. As also detailed in this post the answer is indeed more RAM
FInally went and saw "Tomorrow when the war began" last night with Kathy and a couple of close friends. I was looking forward to this movie as detailed in this blog post And it lived very much up to the hype. I thought it was well done.. smart and rang true. It seemed to me to be very very faithful to the book. The hardware was right. The one criticism I have heard that was worrying was the absurdity of one bunch of kids fighting back against an invasion.. in the context of the book they were one bunch in one area amongst many instances of insurrection... but luckier, faster learning and more successful than most. And this turned out in the end to be the case in the movie as well.. they heard about other unluckier rebels and the RAAF put in a brief appearance. So the movie was very very good. I loved it. There were 7 books in the series and 3 books in another continuing series about the central character after the war.. where she had a few issues. This might turn into a fun movie franchise.
Friday, September 17, 2010
The answer is more RAM
Its been a tough couple of weeks. Kathy and co have kept things ticking over. While I have been coping with a attack of funk and a bit of depression and actually have not been worth very much this week. I had a machine die on the operating table.. the first time that has ever happened to me. And it was a decent machine too. I have no idea what happened.. I had only covers off the machine and no way that I can see that it shorted anything.. but it has broken at some very very subtle level, with no sign of damage. It shook my faith in myself... very upsetting.
I asked in a lot of places for advice.. and got.. "change the board"; " change the board", "If I was you I would change the board" and similar stuff... not one person gave an actually useful response. At least I know I am one of the better techs out there.. at least I know how to solder and drive a multi meter. Unfortunately changing the board is not an option. Long term I might be able to sort it.. but ended up talking to the client. Not a profit maker but what can you do? Saved her data and shall buy her a slightly better lappy or contribute to a new one with the option being hers. All you can do is the best you can for the client.. and while we value all of them this one is very good value. Hopefully this only ever happens once.. its the first one I have lost in nearly 20 years of doing this stuff.. but hey... Lappys are always trouble. There is a lot in a very small space. And it was a Sony. So nice of Sony to have no manuals. Doesn't help.. thats for sure.
I have always believe that its how you fix the things you do wrong that really matters. Have not had to put it into practice very often.. if at all. The client was just great.
Have another lappy here. Needs an update. Is about 7 years old.. but uses DDR 1 RAM. WIthout going into too much history DDR 1 is the first of the really modern RAM. Before that we had SD RAM. Synchronous Delivery or something. RAM is the work bench of the computer. Data gets written from the hard drive to RAM.. gets worked on and then gets written back. The bigger and faster your RAM the better. But its limited by the size of the data bus.. the paths into which the RAM is plugged. Its also limited by the design of the Operating System.. XP for example really only recognises 3 Gb of RAM.. on some computers you can put more.. the machine will not run any faster. And so on.
SD RAM can do reads and writes of course. But not at the same time ( ok its actually slightly more complicated than that....depends a bit on what you mean by time.. but its close enough) DDR RAM.. double data rate can essentially do them at the same time. DDR RAM is similar to the better than system RAM that high end video cards used to use which shared the same capability. Anyway DDR RAM was much faster and a big step up. I figured it would be easy to get for this machine. Well I can get it. Not easily.
We are up to DDR3 now... DDR4 is on the way. Older RAM no longer made and especially no longer made in the increasingly larger sizes.. if it ever was. And as the sizes get better and the cost gets cheaper modern RAM becomes increasingly huger than was possible say 7 years ago. Its important to remember that that 7 year old laptop is still perfectly capable of most things the average person wants. Increasingly software needs more RAM as programmers can be less careful of the amount of resources their software runs just because RAM is more plentiful and cheaper all the time. But generally speaking that computer can still do word processing, and internet browsing just fine. But more RAM would be nice. Its just not available or its hugely more expensive than increasingly cheaper modern RAM.
So people buy a new machine.. cos they can get more RAM with it. Interesting yeah? OK this 7 yo machine has XP pro and office and is about a 1.4. Its fine for word processing and internet browsing. Except that its got 256 Mb of RAM and no one has DDR1 for sale. And XP and firefox like more than that to run at more than a crawl. But I found a source with some 1Gb sticks. And suddenly this machine is useful again. THe cheapest and best upgrade possible. Was not easy finding it.. and er.. not all that cheap. When they stopped making DDR1 this must have been hugely expensive RAM. Now being sold probably for less than the production cost.
The lesson... As soon as you can put as much RAM in your box as you can afford and it will take. It wil maybe let you hang on to this machine for a couple of years longer. It will absolutely make it worth more. And just before they change the RAM spec again it will be a dirt cheap upgrade. That will only get more expensive in the future.
I asked in a lot of places for advice.. and got.. "change the board"; " change the board", "If I was you I would change the board" and similar stuff... not one person gave an actually useful response. At least I know I am one of the better techs out there.. at least I know how to solder and drive a multi meter. Unfortunately changing the board is not an option. Long term I might be able to sort it.. but ended up talking to the client. Not a profit maker but what can you do? Saved her data and shall buy her a slightly better lappy or contribute to a new one with the option being hers. All you can do is the best you can for the client.. and while we value all of them this one is very good value. Hopefully this only ever happens once.. its the first one I have lost in nearly 20 years of doing this stuff.. but hey... Lappys are always trouble. There is a lot in a very small space. And it was a Sony. So nice of Sony to have no manuals. Doesn't help.. thats for sure.
I have always believe that its how you fix the things you do wrong that really matters. Have not had to put it into practice very often.. if at all. The client was just great.
Have another lappy here. Needs an update. Is about 7 years old.. but uses DDR 1 RAM. WIthout going into too much history DDR 1 is the first of the really modern RAM. Before that we had SD RAM. Synchronous Delivery or something. RAM is the work bench of the computer. Data gets written from the hard drive to RAM.. gets worked on and then gets written back. The bigger and faster your RAM the better. But its limited by the size of the data bus.. the paths into which the RAM is plugged. Its also limited by the design of the Operating System.. XP for example really only recognises 3 Gb of RAM.. on some computers you can put more.. the machine will not run any faster. And so on.
SD RAM can do reads and writes of course. But not at the same time ( ok its actually slightly more complicated than that....depends a bit on what you mean by time.. but its close enough) DDR RAM.. double data rate can essentially do them at the same time. DDR RAM is similar to the better than system RAM that high end video cards used to use which shared the same capability. Anyway DDR RAM was much faster and a big step up. I figured it would be easy to get for this machine. Well I can get it. Not easily.
We are up to DDR3 now... DDR4 is on the way. Older RAM no longer made and especially no longer made in the increasingly larger sizes.. if it ever was. And as the sizes get better and the cost gets cheaper modern RAM becomes increasingly huger than was possible say 7 years ago. Its important to remember that that 7 year old laptop is still perfectly capable of most things the average person wants. Increasingly software needs more RAM as programmers can be less careful of the amount of resources their software runs just because RAM is more plentiful and cheaper all the time. But generally speaking that computer can still do word processing, and internet browsing just fine. But more RAM would be nice. Its just not available or its hugely more expensive than increasingly cheaper modern RAM.
So people buy a new machine.. cos they can get more RAM with it. Interesting yeah? OK this 7 yo machine has XP pro and office and is about a 1.4. Its fine for word processing and internet browsing. Except that its got 256 Mb of RAM and no one has DDR1 for sale. And XP and firefox like more than that to run at more than a crawl. But I found a source with some 1Gb sticks. And suddenly this machine is useful again. THe cheapest and best upgrade possible. Was not easy finding it.. and er.. not all that cheap. When they stopped making DDR1 this must have been hugely expensive RAM. Now being sold probably for less than the production cost.
The lesson... As soon as you can put as much RAM in your box as you can afford and it will take. It wil maybe let you hang on to this machine for a couple of years longer. It will absolutely make it worth more. And just before they change the RAM spec again it will be a dirt cheap upgrade. That will only get more expensive in the future.
Monday, September 13, 2010
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.
And Jenny wrote about DISC on the Team Splat! page
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
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
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Oz is not Iraq
Cos we have rain. And a government. :D At last!!!!!
I have been digressing from the point of this blog a bit in the last few posts. The point of this blog...if you have somehow missed it.. is actually to drive visitors to our website...... Me being able to rave on about stuff is just gravy. And so I should occasionally use it as a platform to expand on matters IT and geek related or relating to the business. Just recently I have got all political and cycling oriented and managed both at the same time. Now that Australia finally has a government finally declared at 17 days after the election, I shall shortly get over that.
Huge huge wake up call for pollies everywhere. The result could not be closer. One pollie getting his d**k caught in his zipper and Australia is off to the polls again. I was actually really impressed by the independents... although they could bore the paint off a wall. The good thing about a scared minority government is that it tries hard to please everyone. And the bad thing about a scared minority government is that it tries hard to please everyone. I doubt the government will last out its term but this could be very very good.. or very bad. Sure is going to make the soon to be held Victorian election interesting.
Bob Katter the Queensland independent is a nutter.. its embarrassing to realise that I almost agree with him on gun laws and I absolutely do agree with him on the right to use violence in self defence and the defence of property. Is a bit of property worth killing for..? well if its my property... and you are a low life thieving scumbag of utterly no use to the planet.. I,m ok with it. And if you are not ok with dying.. fine.. go beat up a defenceless unarmed old lady. I don,t agree with Katter on anything else.
Broadband as I predicted was a defining issue for the independents choosing who to declare for. Senator Conman er Conroy was not mentioned. The green
vote was obviously significant... if more people had voted below the line I wonder what would have happened. But as I said.. enough politics.. time to discuss the business.
We actually survived 17 days without a government. Hmmmmmm Interesting.
Our time on NEIS the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme is just about over. NEIS is a brilliant Government scheme (hard to get away from politics is it not?) and I dont often use the words "Brilliant' and "Government" in the same sentence. They pay us something to get the business up and running. Very very cool. T PerfectNotes is just about making enough money to pay the bills without them In spite of a quarter full of tension and issues from many directions. With a staff essentially of 5 or maybe 7 depending on how you count them.. 3 of who are full time.. and one of them a cat, we have not quite made the big time, but we have hopes. Paying the bills, eating and most importantly having fun. Its our business... unlike people I have worked for in the past.. who make petty demands of employees and increasingly and constantly up these demands.. we run it. I can go for a ride in the middle of the day if I want. Sometimes anyway. It possibly means I am up at midnight sorting something. Hell I was up at 1 this morning chasing a nasty little virus around a clients office machine.. But its my business. Brilliant. When we make the shift to having employees instead of contractors... we will have to try and not turn into the other kind of workplace
Most of the people we deal with are great. We have some good and loyal customers. Some of them have become friends. The networking thing is turning into fun. Writing this blog is turning into fun. Watching small businesses grow and knowing we had some input is fantastic. I am pretty optimistic at the moment as you can tell. And with a new government that arrived heralded by massive flooding in Victoria.. portents of doom.. thrown in.
Virtual Assistent enquiries continue to come in. Which reminds me that I have a ton of updating to do on our own website. Sigh. Its not all gravy If we get rich out of this business its going to be the custom work and the Virtual Assistant stuff that pays for the Ferrari.
Networking meeting last night.. as usual these are all good.
And now for a brief support story.. If your computer is running XP and is clean of viri and malware.. yet will not run microsoft updates.. its not clean. Trust me on this. I learn something new most days on this job and that was last nights lesson.
I have been digressing from the point of this blog a bit in the last few posts. The point of this blog...if you have somehow missed it.. is actually to drive visitors to our website...... Me being able to rave on about stuff is just gravy. And so I should occasionally use it as a platform to expand on matters IT and geek related or relating to the business. Just recently I have got all political and cycling oriented and managed both at the same time. Now that Australia finally has a government finally declared at 17 days after the election, I shall shortly get over that.
Huge huge wake up call for pollies everywhere. The result could not be closer. One pollie getting his d**k caught in his zipper and Australia is off to the polls again. I was actually really impressed by the independents... although they could bore the paint off a wall. The good thing about a scared minority government is that it tries hard to please everyone. And the bad thing about a scared minority government is that it tries hard to please everyone. I doubt the government will last out its term but this could be very very good.. or very bad. Sure is going to make the soon to be held Victorian election interesting.
Bob Katter the Queensland independent is a nutter.. its embarrassing to realise that I almost agree with him on gun laws and I absolutely do agree with him on the right to use violence in self defence and the defence of property. Is a bit of property worth killing for..? well if its my property... and you are a low life thieving scumbag of utterly no use to the planet.. I,m ok with it. And if you are not ok with dying.. fine.. go beat up a defenceless unarmed old lady. I don,t agree with Katter on anything else.
Broadband as I predicted was a defining issue for the independents choosing who to declare for. Senator Conman er Conroy was not mentioned. The green
vote was obviously significant... if more people had voted below the line I wonder what would have happened. But as I said.. enough politics.. time to discuss the business.
We actually survived 17 days without a government. Hmmmmmm Interesting.
Our time on NEIS the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme is just about over. NEIS is a brilliant Government scheme (hard to get away from politics is it not?) and I dont often use the words "Brilliant' and "Government" in the same sentence. They pay us something to get the business up and running. Very very cool. T PerfectNotes is just about making enough money to pay the bills without them In spite of a quarter full of tension and issues from many directions. With a staff essentially of 5 or maybe 7 depending on how you count them.. 3 of who are full time.. and one of them a cat, we have not quite made the big time, but we have hopes. Paying the bills, eating and most importantly having fun. Its our business... unlike people I have worked for in the past.. who make petty demands of employees and increasingly and constantly up these demands.. we run it. I can go for a ride in the middle of the day if I want. Sometimes anyway. It possibly means I am up at midnight sorting something. Hell I was up at 1 this morning chasing a nasty little virus around a clients office machine.. But its my business. Brilliant. When we make the shift to having employees instead of contractors... we will have to try and not turn into the other kind of workplace
Most of the people we deal with are great. We have some good and loyal customers. Some of them have become friends. The networking thing is turning into fun. Writing this blog is turning into fun. Watching small businesses grow and knowing we had some input is fantastic. I am pretty optimistic at the moment as you can tell. And with a new government that arrived heralded by massive flooding in Victoria.. portents of doom.. thrown in.
Virtual Assistent enquiries continue to come in. Which reminds me that I have a ton of updating to do on our own website. Sigh. Its not all gravy If we get rich out of this business its going to be the custom work and the Virtual Assistant stuff that pays for the Ferrari.
Networking meeting last night.. as usual these are all good.
And now for a brief support story.. If your computer is running XP and is clean of viri and malware.. yet will not run microsoft updates.. its not clean. Trust me on this. I learn something new most days on this job and that was last nights lesson.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
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?
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
.
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
.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
TGIO
Thank God (or other deity of choice ) that the whole election thing is over. Except that it isn't of course. But at least last week is over. Last week was intense. I had two or three jobs on that just took hugely more time that I can possibly charge for them. Still its all good. It just made for a really really tough week.
I ended up voting pretty much for the Sex Party. No I am serious. I liked their preferences... loved their add and I think pretty much that whatever the hell someone does with another consenting adult of whatever gender or species is probably none of my business. And I was not voting the majors so...
Family first came last. Really, Bunch of Killjoys they are. They took a beating this election. They pretty much push the line that whatever the hell anyone does with another consenting adult absolutely is their business. Some of the nastiest people I have ever met have been the extreme religious and I think Family first push that envelope a bit. Probably offending many readers here. Sorry. Of course my opinions may not be the same as everyone's opinion at Perfect Notes IT
Effectively my vote was for the greens. Mostly agree with the Greens. Bunch of silly idealists but not all that much wrong with that. There is certainly a joke lurking about the Sex Party and votes for it leading to a hung parliament.. but my wide eyed naive innocence is preventing me from seeing it.
Conroy looks like keeping his job. Curses. Maybe I will send him a book. The dummies guide to the internet?
Data recovery.
I am going to put all the weird commands we use on salvaged drive data into a program..probably in C++
. It will dump every file fragment under say 16 Kb.. they are never useful data, and sort all the rest into appropriate directories. Be useful and get the data down to a size thats a lot easier for the machines to cope with. Then we need something that will go through the docs.. pull out useful data to rename em with and automagically do that. And something that can do the same with pics... maybe pull the date out of JPGs that encode the date.. rename the file with that. That should make it easier to cull system data from personal data. Anyone with any ideas do feel free to comment. If I can just get the thing to automagically dump porn it would not hurt.. not likely to be possible.. how to distinguish between porn and art? I may not know much about art but I know what I like?
Cycling.. Managed maybe 250 klicks or so this week. All of it in the rain. Lots of wear on wheel rims.. what can one do? Look at the bike and it would start raining. Won a tram race. Tram racing is my favorite commuter sport.
DISC tonight. Me and the rest of Team Splat! I have to get some Team Splat jerseys made.. any expressions of interest?
Some pics from tonight. Sally on the front of a paceline, me and Jenny hanging on at the back. Moi coming around someone, Jenny,
I ended up voting pretty much for the Sex Party. No I am serious. I liked their preferences... loved their add and I think pretty much that whatever the hell someone does with another consenting adult of whatever gender or species is probably none of my business. And I was not voting the majors so...
Family first came last. Really, Bunch of Killjoys they are. They took a beating this election. They pretty much push the line that whatever the hell anyone does with another consenting adult absolutely is their business. Some of the nastiest people I have ever met have been the extreme religious and I think Family first push that envelope a bit. Probably offending many readers here. Sorry. Of course my opinions may not be the same as everyone's opinion at Perfect Notes IT
Effectively my vote was for the greens. Mostly agree with the Greens. Bunch of silly idealists but not all that much wrong with that. There is certainly a joke lurking about the Sex Party and votes for it leading to a hung parliament.. but my wide eyed naive innocence is preventing me from seeing it.
Conroy looks like keeping his job. Curses. Maybe I will send him a book. The dummies guide to the internet?
Data recovery.
I am going to put all the weird commands we use on salvaged drive data into a program..probably in C++
. It will dump every file fragment under say 16 Kb.. they are never useful data, and sort all the rest into appropriate directories. Be useful and get the data down to a size thats a lot easier for the machines to cope with. Then we need something that will go through the docs.. pull out useful data to rename em with and automagically do that. And something that can do the same with pics... maybe pull the date out of JPGs that encode the date.. rename the file with that. That should make it easier to cull system data from personal data. Anyone with any ideas do feel free to comment. If I can just get the thing to automagically dump porn it would not hurt.. not likely to be possible.. how to distinguish between porn and art? I may not know much about art but I know what I like?
Cycling.. Managed maybe 250 klicks or so this week. All of it in the rain. Lots of wear on wheel rims.. what can one do? Look at the bike and it would start raining. Won a tram race. Tram racing is my favorite commuter sport.
DISC tonight. Me and the rest of Team Splat! I have to get some Team Splat jerseys made.. any expressions of interest?
Some pics from tonight. Sally on the front of a paceline, me and Jenny hanging on at the back. Moi coming around someone, Jenny,
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Election day.
And two diggers killed in an IED explosion in Afghanistan, hope its not an omen. But since I don,t believe in omens I guess its unlikely. They were killed and two others wounded in a Bushmaster, the first fatalities I have heard off in a Bushmaster, considered a very safe light armored vehicle. Damn it.
Lest we forget.
OK I don,t care who you vote for.. well I guess I do. But not that much. But do put that dweeb Conroy last.. and do vote under the line. Let this be Conroy,s last day in the job. Lets get rid of this internet filter garbage and send a clear message to people wanting to stomp on our freedoms.
Good luck to us all.
Lest we forget.
OK I don,t care who you vote for.. well I guess I do. But not that much. But do put that dweeb Conroy last.. and do vote under the line. Let this be Conroy,s last day in the job. Lets get rid of this internet filter garbage and send a clear message to people wanting to stomp on our freedoms.
Good luck to us all.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
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 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.
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.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Its election time.
Oh boy this is going to be a tough one. Julia cannot be trusted. Already posted on that subject here. And some of her maths is decidedly odd. She seems to be giving away rather more money than she actually has. But on the plus side she is the prettier candidate, seems personable and likable, seems to have only run 20% or so over reasonable costs in her job running school upgrades (can you spell Miki?) and is definitely not dumb.
The opposition led by Abbott hold political views to the right of my own. ... slightly to the left of Hitlers. No that is slightly unfair of me but Abbott is on the record as having rejected the government’s fairly pathetic climate policies and as having moved the party to the right. The opposition are also against the resources tax which I strongly support.. and I am already disenchanted by Julia,s weakened stance on that issue. They are getting hammered by union adds on the likelihood of Abbott bringing back workchoices under another name which while alarmist in the extreme is somehow rather convincing. I can see Abbott making the same mistake twice somehow. And Abbot is getting hammered for his poor understanding of economics. Which is interesting because it seems to be Guillard making all the big spending promises.
Abbott to me comes across as a weaselly shifty creep. But that is entirely my impression based on seeing him on TV. Means nothing compared to how he does his job. Its Julia that has stabbed her boss in the back after all
The Greens are likely to have rather more power after this election. Although you need to be careful where your preferences go.
To my mind the most important issue this election is Internet Censorship. I have spoken on this before here and here . Stephen Conroy is the current Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. His position on internet censorship is that he is highly in favor. The family first nutters have significant power in politics in Australia and a so not in favor of internet freedom. Conroy is as I have said in the past, "the wrong man in the wrong job in the wrong century"
Its not my ability to trowel for porn that I am worried about. Any filter the government puts up is going to take me about 5 seconds to get through. Open proxy anyone. No its your ability in the future to become informed about nastier effects of the government policy and the like that matters. Not to mention the waste of money involved in slowing the interweb. And of course the fact its a stupid idea that speaks to a lack of understanding of the technologies involved by a so called 'broadband' minister. A broadband minister with narrowband ideas. Heh... I like that.
Want to beat an internet filter? There you go Hope your connection is fast enough to see it.
This is how I will decide my vote anyway. And no I have not yet decided. But this issue is the decider for me
The opposition led by Abbott hold political views to the right of my own. ... slightly to the left of Hitlers. No that is slightly unfair of me but Abbott is on the record as having rejected the government’s fairly pathetic climate policies and as having moved the party to the right. The opposition are also against the resources tax which I strongly support.. and I am already disenchanted by Julia,s weakened stance on that issue. They are getting hammered by union adds on the likelihood of Abbott bringing back workchoices under another name which while alarmist in the extreme is somehow rather convincing. I can see Abbott making the same mistake twice somehow. And Abbot is getting hammered for his poor understanding of economics. Which is interesting because it seems to be Guillard making all the big spending promises.
Abbott to me comes across as a weaselly shifty creep. But that is entirely my impression based on seeing him on TV. Means nothing compared to how he does his job. Its Julia that has stabbed her boss in the back after all
The Greens are likely to have rather more power after this election. Although you need to be careful where your preferences go.
To my mind the most important issue this election is Internet Censorship. I have spoken on this before here and here . Stephen Conroy is the current Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. His position on internet censorship is that he is highly in favor. The family first nutters have significant power in politics in Australia and a so not in favor of internet freedom. Conroy is as I have said in the past, "the wrong man in the wrong job in the wrong century"
Its not my ability to trowel for porn that I am worried about. Any filter the government puts up is going to take me about 5 seconds to get through. Open proxy anyone. No its your ability in the future to become informed about nastier effects of the government policy and the like that matters. Not to mention the waste of money involved in slowing the interweb. And of course the fact its a stupid idea that speaks to a lack of understanding of the technologies involved by a so called 'broadband' minister. A broadband minister with narrowband ideas. Heh... I like that.
Want to beat an internet filter? There you go Hope your connection is fast enough to see it.
This is how I will decide my vote anyway. And no I have not yet decided. But this issue is the decider for me
Monday, August 9, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
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.
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?
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 wetAnd 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?
Friday, August 6, 2010
Us on the web.
The one market area Perfect Notes IT never really wanted to target was web design. And yet...slowly and steadily the number of web sites we have on the books (heh.. books...on the spreadsheet more like) continues to rise.
We had a bunch of reasons for not specifically targeting web design. Everyone and their dog is doing it... competition is intense. Everyone's second cousin can do a template web site. Or they have a kid who can do it. Or maybe a dog. And they may indeed look ok. And in some cases be ok.
And then there are those people who have genius artistic flair. Like David Rafferton of Vidman Designs No way do I have his talent. Although when I give it some thought its actually obvious that practically no one has his talent Certainly many of the web designers out there lack any talent at all.
On the other hand we can and do hire him for the really creative stuff. As it turns out. Important to hire the right people for the right jobs. Who would have guessed? Senator Conroy, the wrong man in the wrong job in the wrong century. Not to mention the wrong country. But I believe he does not speak Chinese
As to the nuts and bolts of building and running web sites? Yeah I can do that. And I have a degree in multimedia from a pretty good university in Arts (Swinburne) so I doubt I am totally talentless. Its just not where I thought we were going.
However we are doing more and more of it. For example this week. We were approached a couple of days ago to do a web site. I have been putting data in another plone site all day. (OK we always expected a fair bit of work doing that sort of thing but it is one of our sites) And Mark and I have decided to do a site of our own.. 'www.plantsupplies.com.au ' to move Mark.s thriving part time business along a bit. And when its up we will run that one too. (and pay the bills on it.. and take a slice of the profits for perfectnotes) And Kathy is just finishing off another site we built. WIth some bits in it from Vidman Design. Looks gorgeous. That site goes live next week and I will be sure to link to it from the blog when it does. Looks great
So it seems we are in fact web designers. One of the things I like most about running a small business (other than moving it towards being a medium business) is the constant surprises. I seem to be spending a lot of time thinking "how did that happen?"
Love it. Got a web site you need done? Contact us.
No bids on the Toyota yet. 15 Watchers. Hmmmmm.
We had a bunch of reasons for not specifically targeting web design. Everyone and their dog is doing it... competition is intense. Everyone's second cousin can do a template web site. Or they have a kid who can do it. Or maybe a dog. And they may indeed look ok. And in some cases be ok.
And then there are those people who have genius artistic flair. Like David Rafferton of Vidman Designs No way do I have his talent. Although when I give it some thought its actually obvious that practically no one has his talent Certainly many of the web designers out there lack any talent at all.
On the other hand we can and do hire him for the really creative stuff. As it turns out. Important to hire the right people for the right jobs. Who would have guessed? Senator Conroy, the wrong man in the wrong job in the wrong century. Not to mention the wrong country. But I believe he does not speak Chinese
As to the nuts and bolts of building and running web sites? Yeah I can do that. And I have a degree in multimedia from a pretty good university in Arts (Swinburne) so I doubt I am totally talentless. Its just not where I thought we were going.
However we are doing more and more of it. For example this week. We were approached a couple of days ago to do a web site. I have been putting data in another plone site all day. (OK we always expected a fair bit of work doing that sort of thing but it is one of our sites) And Mark and I have decided to do a site of our own.. 'www.plantsupplies.com.au ' to move Mark.s thriving part time business along a bit. And when its up we will run that one too. (and pay the bills on it.. and take a slice of the profits for perfectnotes) And Kathy is just finishing off another site we built. WIth some bits in it from Vidman Design. Looks gorgeous. That site goes live next week and I will be sure to link to it from the blog when it does. Looks great
So it seems we are in fact web designers. One of the things I like most about running a small business (other than moving it towards being a medium business) is the constant surprises. I seem to be spending a lot of time thinking "how did that happen?"
Love it. Got a web site you need done? Contact us.
No bids on the Toyota yet. 15 Watchers. Hmmmmm.
Monday, August 2, 2010
And now its just silly.
Well behind on the blog posting with the recent burst of work. Sounds like good news hey? However of course the news is not all good. Is it ever? Its all a bit mixed in... as one of my more annoying friends says "point of actual fact":"
Our install in the city met a snag. Some issue with the multiple websites hosted on their IIS server meaning it did not respond in exactly the same way that our test website on our test server did. Some issue nearly impossible to duplicate or test for but something that has to be resolved. Of course hosting one website should have nothing to do with hosting another... address resolution and redirection issues aside but there we go. Its a MS issue .. if I were inclined to be generous I would say its a programming issue.
Also my carefully worked out backup procedure did not work. Well it does.. so obviously I documented something wrong. That won't relate to a software difference, its just a poor documentation by yours truly issue. I,ll wear that. I will sort that today.. the plan was to do it over the weekend but things got in the way. Namely data recovery things
So today I shall mainly talk about data recovery. This particular mac was reformatted and rebuilt from a factory install image. Right over the top of a working machine. Lost data
Sometimes you can go back in time to an earlier format version and retrieve the machine entire. Or at worst entire directory structures. The problem in this case seems to be that the install disk installed a much worked on and modified image complete.. even to ghosts of former partitions. At least that's what I think happens.. my software detects 50 or more former partition schemes. Not easy.
So pull the data off anyway you can. Photorec pulls everything that looks like a file off the complete drive. Everything. A very very small percentage of which is useful. And for reasons I am not clear on dumps it all into a vast number of directories. Its a time consuming and slow process. And getting all that data into one single directory so we can do searches and separate out the useful stuff is really annoying. I must find out why it does not do this for us
Normally we pull the drive.. put it into one of the servers with whatever adapters are needed to make it work.. and have the server.. probably the machine I am writing this on.. a linux box running ubuntu.. pull the data down. Its a slow slow process.. usually taking 40 hours or so.. with 200 Gb or better drives around. This was a new mac under warranty.. not really wanting to pull it apart. But with Macs their is an alternative. Most Macs have firewire. And they have this ability when connected to another Mac by firewire to be booted up in what they call Target Mode. In which the entire Mac just becomes a big external hard drive to the other machine. Very very cool. And so my macbook got the job.
Its a lot of data. I wrote a program (script) to drop it all into one dir and thats still grinding away. Meanwhile I am missing my laptop. I have to write blog posts sitting up at the server instead of lying on the floor. Makes me far less productive. You can see why I work for myself can you not? Anyway its so much data the poor little Macbook is seriously struggling. Which is itself depressing and time consuming.
Pulling the data off this way has one huge drawback. You lose the file names. The reason for this is that the file-name is essentially a label pointing at a location on the drive. We are pulling the data directly off the drive. So the label becomes another separate bit of junk. Start, and finish and whatever scrap of data is in between is salvaged and given some random file-name. Deleted stuff gets retrieved too. Think you zapped that bit of porn.. think again? Some files are easy to identify.. pics have the description of what they are within the file as do docs and the software is smart enough to pick up on that and label them with the appropriate file extension, which is how Unixy systems like linux and OSX do it anyway. When we hand this stuff back to the client we just politely ignore the stuff that is embarrassing. Not in this case btw.. this clients stuff is squeaky clean but in general. Rarely have to look at more than a few things... just have to confirm that I am recovering what I think I am recovering.
Recovered 200 Gb of pics for Kathy's former partner last year. Not a single filename. Backups are such a good idea. Still with a browser allowing thumbnails quick sorting of data is at least achievable. Keywords can be searched for in docs. Nearly all the straight text recovered is rubbish. All better than nothing tho.
Kathy and I took the motorbike into town for this job on Friday. While we were their we bought a netbook for my friend Robyn's visit to Sara in the UK. Sorry Sa... Apple don;t make a netbook yet and an Iphone was not going to cut it. We paid retail, wholesale seems pointless these days.. costs more than you can get retail a lot of the time, so many good deals out there We came back.. with Kathy on the back of the motorcycle with thousands of dollars of computer equipment between the two of us. Backed up at home of course
Anyway this post again reiterates my point. Backups guys... backups.
I,ll post again this evening.. much catching up to do.
Our install in the city met a snag. Some issue with the multiple websites hosted on their IIS server meaning it did not respond in exactly the same way that our test website on our test server did. Some issue nearly impossible to duplicate or test for but something that has to be resolved. Of course hosting one website should have nothing to do with hosting another... address resolution and redirection issues aside but there we go. Its a MS issue .. if I were inclined to be generous I would say its a programming issue.
Also my carefully worked out backup procedure did not work. Well it does.. so obviously I documented something wrong. That won't relate to a software difference, its just a poor documentation by yours truly issue. I,ll wear that. I will sort that today.. the plan was to do it over the weekend but things got in the way. Namely data recovery things
So today I shall mainly talk about data recovery. This particular mac was reformatted and rebuilt from a factory install image. Right over the top of a working machine. Lost data
Sometimes you can go back in time to an earlier format version and retrieve the machine entire. Or at worst entire directory structures. The problem in this case seems to be that the install disk installed a much worked on and modified image complete.. even to ghosts of former partitions. At least that's what I think happens.. my software detects 50 or more former partition schemes. Not easy.
So pull the data off anyway you can. Photorec pulls everything that looks like a file off the complete drive. Everything. A very very small percentage of which is useful. And for reasons I am not clear on dumps it all into a vast number of directories. Its a time consuming and slow process. And getting all that data into one single directory so we can do searches and separate out the useful stuff is really annoying. I must find out why it does not do this for us
Normally we pull the drive.. put it into one of the servers with whatever adapters are needed to make it work.. and have the server.. probably the machine I am writing this on.. a linux box running ubuntu.. pull the data down. Its a slow slow process.. usually taking 40 hours or so.. with 200 Gb or better drives around. This was a new mac under warranty.. not really wanting to pull it apart. But with Macs their is an alternative. Most Macs have firewire. And they have this ability when connected to another Mac by firewire to be booted up in what they call Target Mode. In which the entire Mac just becomes a big external hard drive to the other machine. Very very cool. And so my macbook got the job.
Its a lot of data. I wrote a program (script) to drop it all into one dir and thats still grinding away. Meanwhile I am missing my laptop. I have to write blog posts sitting up at the server instead of lying on the floor. Makes me far less productive. You can see why I work for myself can you not? Anyway its so much data the poor little Macbook is seriously struggling. Which is itself depressing and time consuming.
Pulling the data off this way has one huge drawback. You lose the file names. The reason for this is that the file-name is essentially a label pointing at a location on the drive. We are pulling the data directly off the drive. So the label becomes another separate bit of junk. Start, and finish and whatever scrap of data is in between is salvaged and given some random file-name. Deleted stuff gets retrieved too. Think you zapped that bit of porn.. think again? Some files are easy to identify.. pics have the description of what they are within the file as do docs and the software is smart enough to pick up on that and label them with the appropriate file extension, which is how Unixy systems like linux and OSX do it anyway. When we hand this stuff back to the client we just politely ignore the stuff that is embarrassing. Not in this case btw.. this clients stuff is squeaky clean but in general. Rarely have to look at more than a few things... just have to confirm that I am recovering what I think I am recovering.
Recovered 200 Gb of pics for Kathy's former partner last year. Not a single filename. Backups are such a good idea. Still with a browser allowing thumbnails quick sorting of data is at least achievable. Keywords can be searched for in docs. Nearly all the straight text recovered is rubbish. All better than nothing tho.
Kathy and I took the motorbike into town for this job on Friday. While we were their we bought a netbook for my friend Robyn's visit to Sara in the UK. Sorry Sa... Apple don;t make a netbook yet and an Iphone was not going to cut it. We paid retail, wholesale seems pointless these days.. costs more than you can get retail a lot of the time, so many good deals out there We came back.. with Kathy on the back of the motorcycle with thousands of dollars of computer equipment between the two of us. Backed up at home of course
Anyway this post again reiterates my point. Backups guys... backups.
I,ll post again this evening.. much catching up to do.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Suddenly its just silly busy.
So a machine to sort for a long time friend. It would not see the interweb. Turned out to be a combination of a dead on board network card and a extra firewall that had strangely downloaded and installed itself. Sorted. Noisy fan.. old machine, supplier had no fans that could easily be made to fix.. sorted with secret method I am embarrassed to relate. Sigh I have a bottle of wine from her already. Hope she realizes we need money as well.
Bike shop with virus infestation. Visited.. left antivirus and anti stealthware stuff running. Return visit required
Another 4 pages of products for a web site we are building turned up.. Just about to take the lappy to bed and do some of that. A lot of work there.
Another customer has accidentally blown away the install on an ibook.. data recovery... always time consuming. Very time consuming Also has a machine requiring a rebuild for a child.. being done at the moment. Its second hand, without an OS and I was going to put a linux on it.. then I discovered the XP home licence on the case. He is a kid.. he is going to want games on it, I guess I need to put XP on it.. cruel thing to do to a child but it could be worse.. could be Vista. :P
Friday morning we have a secret install to do in the city.. I have a major test of some stuff to do before that.. a good mornings work to validate it all.
4:pm job in the city tomorrow. 8pm job friday. Some leaflets printed to be delivered to a local area.
Website update.. with new links to blog... checkout addwords campaign and hits.. see how well its working
Kathy has a site to go online in the next couple of days, another one by the end of the week.. a bunch of VA stuff to get though.
Mark and I have a site to develop and get roughly happening by early next week. We are going to sell some plants on line. Mainly hedge plants and the like. not really my area but the site is... doubtless Kathy will be involved in that at some point.
Camera, netbook, and a decent second hand lappy to acquire this week. We could use a couple more lcd monitors too.
And Ashley (my evil brother) has some VA work for us... urgently.
Could be a good week.
Bike shop with virus infestation. Visited.. left antivirus and anti stealthware stuff running. Return visit required
Another 4 pages of products for a web site we are building turned up.. Just about to take the lappy to bed and do some of that. A lot of work there.
Another customer has accidentally blown away the install on an ibook.. data recovery... always time consuming. Very time consuming Also has a machine requiring a rebuild for a child.. being done at the moment. Its second hand, without an OS and I was going to put a linux on it.. then I discovered the XP home licence on the case. He is a kid.. he is going to want games on it, I guess I need to put XP on it.. cruel thing to do to a child but it could be worse.. could be Vista. :P
Friday morning we have a secret install to do in the city.. I have a major test of some stuff to do before that.. a good mornings work to validate it all.
4:pm job in the city tomorrow. 8pm job friday. Some leaflets printed to be delivered to a local area.
Website update.. with new links to blog... checkout addwords campaign and hits.. see how well its working
Kathy has a site to go online in the next couple of days, another one by the end of the week.. a bunch of VA stuff to get though.
Mark and I have a site to develop and get roughly happening by early next week. We are going to sell some plants on line. Mainly hedge plants and the like. not really my area but the site is... doubtless Kathy will be involved in that at some point.
Camera, netbook, and a decent second hand lappy to acquire this week. We could use a couple more lcd monitors too.
And Ashley (my evil brother) has some VA work for us... urgently.
Could be a good week.
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