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.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Back to Track
I was going to talk about the bike lanes in Albert St East Melbourne so lets do that first (or was I going to rave about the hire bike scheme? My mind is going.. I can feel it. Ahhh well one rave at a post)
These two pictures one taken just before and the other just after these lanes came in. (thanking the Age online ) shows what we are talking about. The cars in the left lane are actually parked. Maybe. Sorta hard to tell. Definitely part of the issue.
Let me point you at this thread on BV forums.
Here is Bicycle Victoria's take on it all. Most of which I think is rubbish.
Speaking as a very experienced cyclist (he says looking at the floor shyly and scuffing his cleated feet) going into town in times of heavy traffic its sort of ok(ish) . But crikey some people park so badly they should lose their licenses.. or at the very least be booked. I am going to take a camera in some time soon. Its mildly entertaining watching them.
Coming out of town.. late in the evening its rather lethal. 40 kph is dangerously fast on it.. and I usually hit 50 for most of that trip on the mostly downhill road. Pretty safely using a lane and traveling at the same speed as the cars . The bike lane green surface is unsettlingly loose. The driveways are lethal.. and at 30 I usually manage to have a near miss with someone pulling across the bike lane and propping while they check for cars. Although the green surface may be loose I know of someone who has destroyed a tire on it while panic braking which means that the surface must be as abrasive as hell. The normal problem of cars overtaking marginally faster than you.. and instantly turning left is aggravated by the design.. they have some actual excuse They come up the outside of the row of parked cars and you come up the inside The poles now sticking out of the edge of the bike lane on the north west end are absolutely for sure going to kill or maim someone. And they are so obviously lethal that I plan to go in with a camera on Monday.. take pics of them and make them available to the police and or coroner when I hear of it happening
What I would do is.. maybe try it for a bit longer on the uphill into town.. With some serious enforcement. On the way out of town I would lose the car parking altogether. I would make the left lane entirely a bicycle lane.. it would be very wide. And I would allow cars in it. Difficult to say what I mean but try and market it as a non exclusive bicycle lane in which bicycles have the right of way.
The way to make cycling safer in the city is to make the strict liability on the car. Where there is an accident the car driver is assumed at fault in the absence of other evidence. If it can be demonstrated the cyclist is at fault then the cyclist is charged but otherwise the car driver is assumed at fault. This works in a lot of countries and pretty much gets rid of the sort of accident where the car driver claims the cyclist must have swerved. It makes car drivers careful of cyclists. It makes the more dangerous vehicle carry the onus which to me at least seems absolutely reasonable. Comments anyone?
Coming up Lonsdale street in the evening on friday one of my tail lights came off.. Stopped in the middle of the lane. Maybe a hundred cars missed it but the very last one.. some sod in a Camry managed by swerving to hit it fair and square. Class mate... pure class. Whoever you are, your wife and kids think you are worth living with. Wait. Sooner or later they will find out the truth.. self evident to many of us who share the planet with you. Take your small minded moment of triumph and hug it to you because you are indeed pathetic..
OK two raves per blog post.
The sad part of the day was the Grand Prix Cycles memorial ride for Steven Hart. I slept so late I took the car in. Our guesstimates of numbers for the ride varied.. maybe 200 or so with nibbles after. It was a very varied bunch.. and I got at least 2 dozen "how did you know Steven" I met some old mates. And TheotherActiveFeetGuy from BV forums. It was not so sad as all that actually. He touched a lot of people. RIP Steven. Life is fragile. Being missed is not so bad
Team Splat did track tonight. All 3 riders currently on the books. The gorgeous Sally back from her world travels finally made an appearance. And the Lovely Jenny.. still getting her mind back together after her nasty crash last year not only came .. but rode on a wooden olympic velo. And its only a couple of months since that scared the living daylights (not the original word I used here) out of me so I know exactly how much courage that took. I don,t think I can possibly describe how proud I am of her. She rode the full program too. Immensely proud of both girls. But Jenny beat her demons tonight so I don't think I will meet anyone as brave any time soon. She came around yesterday and we put new ABOC approved super sticky track tires on her bike and she was nervy then.. was waiting when I got to DISC and nervy then. And did just brilliantly.
A weirdness. That goes to it being a very very very small world indeed. One of the other girls at track was talking about her husband. Penny dropped. (no not that Penny. Yes her husband is a perfect notes client. And a good one. And possibly has a netbook for sale.. that might conceivably sort another issue. Amazing huh?
These two pictures one taken just before and the other just after these lanes came in. (thanking the Age online ) shows what we are talking about. The cars in the left lane are actually parked. Maybe. Sorta hard to tell. Definitely part of the issue.
Let me point you at this thread on BV forums.
Here is Bicycle Victoria's take on it all. Most of which I think is rubbish.
Speaking as a very experienced cyclist (he says looking at the floor shyly and scuffing his cleated feet) going into town in times of heavy traffic its sort of ok(ish) . But crikey some people park so badly they should lose their licenses.. or at the very least be booked. I am going to take a camera in some time soon. Its mildly entertaining watching them.
Coming out of town.. late in the evening its rather lethal. 40 kph is dangerously fast on it.. and I usually hit 50 for most of that trip on the mostly downhill road. Pretty safely using a lane and traveling at the same speed as the cars . The bike lane green surface is unsettlingly loose. The driveways are lethal.. and at 30 I usually manage to have a near miss with someone pulling across the bike lane and propping while they check for cars. Although the green surface may be loose I know of someone who has destroyed a tire on it while panic braking which means that the surface must be as abrasive as hell. The normal problem of cars overtaking marginally faster than you.. and instantly turning left is aggravated by the design.. they have some actual excuse They come up the outside of the row of parked cars and you come up the inside The poles now sticking out of the edge of the bike lane on the north west end are absolutely for sure going to kill or maim someone. And they are so obviously lethal that I plan to go in with a camera on Monday.. take pics of them and make them available to the police and or coroner when I hear of it happening
What I would do is.. maybe try it for a bit longer on the uphill into town.. With some serious enforcement. On the way out of town I would lose the car parking altogether. I would make the left lane entirely a bicycle lane.. it would be very wide. And I would allow cars in it. Difficult to say what I mean but try and market it as a non exclusive bicycle lane in which bicycles have the right of way.
The way to make cycling safer in the city is to make the strict liability on the car. Where there is an accident the car driver is assumed at fault in the absence of other evidence. If it can be demonstrated the cyclist is at fault then the cyclist is charged but otherwise the car driver is assumed at fault. This works in a lot of countries and pretty much gets rid of the sort of accident where the car driver claims the cyclist must have swerved. It makes car drivers careful of cyclists. It makes the more dangerous vehicle carry the onus which to me at least seems absolutely reasonable. Comments anyone?
Coming up Lonsdale street in the evening on friday one of my tail lights came off.. Stopped in the middle of the lane. Maybe a hundred cars missed it but the very last one.. some sod in a Camry managed by swerving to hit it fair and square. Class mate... pure class. Whoever you are, your wife and kids think you are worth living with. Wait. Sooner or later they will find out the truth.. self evident to many of us who share the planet with you. Take your small minded moment of triumph and hug it to you because you are indeed pathetic..
OK two raves per blog post.
The sad part of the day was the Grand Prix Cycles memorial ride for Steven Hart. I slept so late I took the car in. Our guesstimates of numbers for the ride varied.. maybe 200 or so with nibbles after. It was a very varied bunch.. and I got at least 2 dozen "how did you know Steven" I met some old mates. And TheotherActiveFeetGuy from BV forums. It was not so sad as all that actually. He touched a lot of people. RIP Steven. Life is fragile. Being missed is not so bad
Team Splat did track tonight. All 3 riders currently on the books. The gorgeous Sally back from her world travels finally made an appearance. And the Lovely Jenny.. still getting her mind back together after her nasty crash last year not only came .. but rode on a wooden olympic velo. And its only a couple of months since that scared the living daylights (not the original word I used here) out of me so I know exactly how much courage that took. I don,t think I can possibly describe how proud I am of her. She rode the full program too. Immensely proud of both girls. But Jenny beat her demons tonight so I don't think I will meet anyone as brave any time soon. She came around yesterday and we put new ABOC approved super sticky track tires on her bike and she was nervy then.. was waiting when I got to DISC and nervy then. And did just brilliantly.
A weirdness. That goes to it being a very very very small world indeed. One of the other girls at track was talking about her husband. Penny dropped. (no not that Penny. Yes her husband is a perfect notes client. And a good one. And possibly has a netbook for sale.. that might conceivably sort another issue. Amazing huh?
Friday, July 23, 2010
The last mountain
Its been an awesomely quiet week on the work front. Have done a lot of administration, organizing and promotional stuff but not much actual work. Really quite depressing. I have some bits and pieces of web dev to go on with.. and some of the same to do for ourselves and other things begin to look more organized but still. Blog hits continue to go up.. that is going much better, and the number of people looking at PerfectNotes from here is going up. Which is good. Its the only way I can justify this prodigious self serving ranting to my starving staff.
A couple of our clients are absolutely and totally flat out.. which makes me wonder why our local downturn. Its not such a complete downturn.. either, have had a dozen people or more ask for advice.. advice of the type that we cannot quite call consulting and charge for. Including one person wanting to talk about going from Thunderbird to Outlook. Can sum that bit of advice up pretty easy in one word, But it seems they were using a CRM package called ACT, Instead of ours. Sigh. And ACT cannot talk to IMAP. It needs Outlook. A reason to not use it right there I should think. Ahhh well. It turns out their is commercial software letting you turn IMAP to PST. And we have software of our own letting you go the other far more sensible way. So its all covered.
One of the things about proprietary software like MS Outlook is that it has its format for keeping data in. (PST) Athough PST supposedly subscribes to an open format no one else that I am aware uses it Getting it into another format to use with someone else's software is difficult and expensive.. Sometimes impossible. So once you have your 6 months worth of calendar stuff. email, business contacts and the like in Outlook its probably staying there. Welcome to the wonderful world of Microsoft, loyal Microsoft sl... er customer.
Kathy is off to Echuca. She says to explore possible Virtual Assistant customers. But I happen to know that their is a blues festival happening there this week. I suspect a connection.
Last night was the last mountain stage of the Tour de France. A bunch of us went to Blackburn Cycling Club and watched it live. About 15 of us this time. Bundled in blankets, watching it on the big(ish) screen. eating hot snacks.. Listening to Penny being soft. It was all good.
The stage was amazing Contador. knew his real danger was Schleck and stayed glued to his back wheel. He had to stay within 8 seconds.. and Schleck had to pull out.. realistically something like 30 seconds. Each attacked savagely up the last mountain Eventually each attack ended with Contador 6 inches behind Schleck and the peleton coming apart behind them. And that's how it finished. Contador 6 inches behind and 8 seconds ahead. Schleck winning the stage. Contador almost certainly winning the tour. Desperately hurting riders coming up the hill in dribs and drabs. The remainder of the main peleton down to maybe 20 riders some 5 or 6 minutes down. Armstrong still in with them. A great evening.
Tomorrow I shall expand on my opinion of the Melbourne Bike Hire Scheme. Wonder if the Age will post my comment.
A couple of our clients are absolutely and totally flat out.. which makes me wonder why our local downturn. Its not such a complete downturn.. either, have had a dozen people or more ask for advice.. advice of the type that we cannot quite call consulting and charge for. Including one person wanting to talk about going from Thunderbird to Outlook. Can sum that bit of advice up pretty easy in one word, But it seems they were using a CRM package called ACT, Instead of ours. Sigh. And ACT cannot talk to IMAP. It needs Outlook. A reason to not use it right there I should think. Ahhh well. It turns out their is commercial software letting you turn IMAP to PST. And we have software of our own letting you go the other far more sensible way. So its all covered.
One of the things about proprietary software like MS Outlook is that it has its format for keeping data in. (PST) Athough PST supposedly subscribes to an open format no one else that I am aware uses it Getting it into another format to use with someone else's software is difficult and expensive.. Sometimes impossible. So once you have your 6 months worth of calendar stuff. email, business contacts and the like in Outlook its probably staying there. Welcome to the wonderful world of Microsoft, loyal Microsoft sl... er customer.
Kathy is off to Echuca. She says to explore possible Virtual Assistant customers. But I happen to know that their is a blues festival happening there this week. I suspect a connection.
Last night was the last mountain stage of the Tour de France. A bunch of us went to Blackburn Cycling Club and watched it live. About 15 of us this time. Bundled in blankets, watching it on the big(ish) screen. eating hot snacks.. Listening to Penny being soft. It was all good.
The stage was amazing Contador. knew his real danger was Schleck and stayed glued to his back wheel. He had to stay within 8 seconds.. and Schleck had to pull out.. realistically something like 30 seconds. Each attacked savagely up the last mountain Eventually each attack ended with Contador 6 inches behind Schleck and the peleton coming apart behind them. And that's how it finished. Contador 6 inches behind and 8 seconds ahead. Schleck winning the stage. Contador almost certainly winning the tour. Desperately hurting riders coming up the hill in dribs and drabs. The remainder of the main peleton down to maybe 20 riders some 5 or 6 minutes down. Armstrong still in with them. A great evening.
Tomorrow I shall expand on my opinion of the Melbourne Bike Hire Scheme. Wonder if the Age will post my comment.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Sometimes you’re the nail.
Wow, that was nail biting stuff on the tour last night. A desperate brave solo breakaway by Carlos Barredo who was hunted down and caught.. and passed, exhausted and broken within the last kilometer, And in the breakaway that hunted him down... attack after attack launched up the steep heartbreaking slopes of the four Pyreneean summits the stage took in on the way to Pau Armstrong prominent in that bunch, riding strongly with his trademark impassive face, responding to the attacks and launching a serious dig or two off his own... and at the end. while probably the poorest sprinter in the bunch, he managed a sprint.
He did not win.. few fairy tales in the tour... its way too tough and brutal for that. But he hung with the leaders in a day long breakaway in the toughest of the mountain stages, and finished sixth. Its likely the last bit of greatness we will see from Lance... but it was superb. No one can really doubt that he is going down fighting and showing style. He once said "No gifts" and no one is giving him any, that is for sure.
Pierrick Fédrigo of France won the stage. But sorry Pierrick.. but no one cares. Armstrong got sixth... that is what everyone is going to remember.
Armstrong commented after his early crash that dropped him out of overall tour contention that "Sometimes you are the hammer and sometimes you are the nail" Well a lot of people have been hammered this tour...Renshaw out.. Evans back with the main bunch and ever further out of contention.. nearly every one in the peleton missing skin or nursing broken bones of greater or lesser consequence in what might become known as the 'tour of the crash' Its really wonderful to see Lance go out with style.
I was going to comment on Contador's unsporting behavior in attacking, and indeed taking yellow while Andy Schleck was having a mechanical issue the other day. But I think I already have. If Alberto wins the one thing he won't be able to say is that he won it without any gifts. Well he will be able to say it of course.. and modesty is not Alberto's best thing so he will say it loudly and often. But its just not true. Interestingly he has since apologized. I suspect that while he is not going to admit it he feels the same way I think the boos when he got yellow were probably a serious slap across the face. He deserved them IMO. But rumor says he is a nice bloke and smart, so hopefully he learned something
Ok yesterday was a group mentoring meeting at Box Hill Tafe yesterday afternoon Some useful point came out of it.. and I have been playing with this blog and will be playing with the website a lot doing Search Engine Optimization stuff. We generally do OK at that stuff.. but some useful suggestions came out of the meeting. One issue that Kathy had pointed out the other day is that while the blog is taking on a life of its own with a steady increase in readership the people concerned are not going to our business website. Which is Perfectnotes.com.au So go and visit it now. I am attempting to address this issue.
Another issue is that my style is a bit idiosyncratic. This blog is about half business blog.. and half cycling blog.. it works for me.. its how I like to write and this blog is at least partially about me liking to write. Its less polished business site than it could be. That is by design.. i think this sort of style is far less formal.. and it is at least partially about me as a person and us as nice people who will try pretty hard for the customer. I mean I don.t want to be a company like Telstra. A Telstra blog would have no soul. And they absolutely will not go that extra mile.. or even two cm for you. But a Telstra blog would be polished. So I could do polished if I want to. But if I do its going to be because someone has hired me to do polished for them. But it does mean that doing tags on content in my posts is an issue.. I mean is this a cycling post or is it one about SEO? And how many people are out their searching for posts on Cycling Search Engine Optimisation? Having a multitasking blog is tricky.
SEO needs frequent revisiting tho. Its a work in progress. As any web site should be. Another issue we have at the moment is that currently the blog is a wordpress site but the website is not. In the fullness of time the web site will be hosted by us and running in Plone and we will host the blog on the same site. But how to deal with it in the intern is an issue.
Bought print cartridges from France this morning. A lot cheaper than local. But then again its harder to sort a warranty issue. Kathy asked how long they were likely to take to get here. Well, its a mystery. But the last time I bought stuff from the UK it took less time to get here than the last time I bought stuff from Sydney. Such a small fragile world. I shall have to devote some more time to think about the election. Cannot help but think the world is too fragile to trust to pollies.
This group mentoring thing was run by Georg who I have mentioned previously as having a nice little financial software package called Finetunebiz Cashbook.that is probably a good fit for lots of small businesses worldwide. He has carefully stayed away from making it country specific and is pretty much targeting the user currently using a shoebox to manage their finances. He was really happy to see us as I had mentioned that I liked his bit of software and his analytic's program had picked up on it. So here is another little rev for him. I do think that the success of Perfectnotes is totally dependent on how well we network.. so this is me networking. In spite of all too many interruptions by the staff.
He did not win.. few fairy tales in the tour... its way too tough and brutal for that. But he hung with the leaders in a day long breakaway in the toughest of the mountain stages, and finished sixth. Its likely the last bit of greatness we will see from Lance... but it was superb. No one can really doubt that he is going down fighting and showing style. He once said "No gifts" and no one is giving him any, that is for sure.
Pierrick Fédrigo of France won the stage. But sorry Pierrick.. but no one cares. Armstrong got sixth... that is what everyone is going to remember.
Armstrong commented after his early crash that dropped him out of overall tour contention that "Sometimes you are the hammer and sometimes you are the nail" Well a lot of people have been hammered this tour...Renshaw out.. Evans back with the main bunch and ever further out of contention.. nearly every one in the peleton missing skin or nursing broken bones of greater or lesser consequence in what might become known as the 'tour of the crash' Its really wonderful to see Lance go out with style.
I was going to comment on Contador's unsporting behavior in attacking, and indeed taking yellow while Andy Schleck was having a mechanical issue the other day. But I think I already have. If Alberto wins the one thing he won't be able to say is that he won it without any gifts. Well he will be able to say it of course.. and modesty is not Alberto's best thing so he will say it loudly and often. But its just not true. Interestingly he has since apologized. I suspect that while he is not going to admit it he feels the same way I think the boos when he got yellow were probably a serious slap across the face. He deserved them IMO. But rumor says he is a nice bloke and smart, so hopefully he learned something
Ok yesterday was a group mentoring meeting at Box Hill Tafe yesterday afternoon Some useful point came out of it.. and I have been playing with this blog and will be playing with the website a lot doing Search Engine Optimization stuff. We generally do OK at that stuff.. but some useful suggestions came out of the meeting. One issue that Kathy had pointed out the other day is that while the blog is taking on a life of its own with a steady increase in readership the people concerned are not going to our business website. Which is Perfectnotes.com.au So go and visit it now. I am attempting to address this issue.
Another issue is that my style is a bit idiosyncratic. This blog is about half business blog.. and half cycling blog.. it works for me.. its how I like to write and this blog is at least partially about me liking to write. Its less polished business site than it could be. That is by design.. i think this sort of style is far less formal.. and it is at least partially about me as a person and us as nice people who will try pretty hard for the customer. I mean I don.t want to be a company like Telstra. A Telstra blog would have no soul. And they absolutely will not go that extra mile.. or even two cm for you. But a Telstra blog would be polished. So I could do polished if I want to. But if I do its going to be because someone has hired me to do polished for them. But it does mean that doing tags on content in my posts is an issue.. I mean is this a cycling post or is it one about SEO? And how many people are out their searching for posts on Cycling Search Engine Optimisation? Having a multitasking blog is tricky.
SEO needs frequent revisiting tho. Its a work in progress. As any web site should be. Another issue we have at the moment is that currently the blog is a wordpress site but the website is not. In the fullness of time the web site will be hosted by us and running in Plone and we will host the blog on the same site. But how to deal with it in the intern is an issue.
Bought print cartridges from France this morning. A lot cheaper than local. But then again its harder to sort a warranty issue. Kathy asked how long they were likely to take to get here. Well, its a mystery. But the last time I bought stuff from the UK it took less time to get here than the last time I bought stuff from Sydney. Such a small fragile world. I shall have to devote some more time to think about the election. Cannot help but think the world is too fragile to trust to pollies.
This group mentoring thing was run by Georg who I have mentioned previously as having a nice little financial software package called Finetunebiz Cashbook.that is probably a good fit for lots of small businesses worldwide. He has carefully stayed away from making it country specific and is pretty much targeting the user currently using a shoebox to manage their finances. He was really happy to see us as I had mentioned that I liked his bit of software and his analytic's program had picked up on it. So here is another little rev for him. I do think that the success of Perfectnotes is totally dependent on how well we network.. so this is me networking. In spite of all too many interruptions by the staff.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Cybercrime.
At Monash law yesterday evening.
Student to me "Do you know where (the subject) cybercrime is"
Me "Its all around us. Its ubiquitous. Its everywhere"
Student. "Good Answer"
Incidentally I broke into our WEP wireless network in about 5 seconds the other day. It seems all the fuss about WEP security is based in reality. WEP appears to not be the way to go
Student to me "Do you know where (the subject) cybercrime is"
Me "Its all around us. Its ubiquitous. Its everywhere"
Student. "Good Answer"
Incidentally I broke into our WEP wireless network in about 5 seconds the other day. It seems all the fuss about WEP security is based in reality. WEP appears to not be the way to go
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Its raining indoors.
I have figured out how to do my little backup problem. So I will sort that this evening. This morning was windy but lovely and I ended up doing about 60 Km on the road bike this morning. Then came home with every intention of sorting backup problem. Woke up with 20 minutes to get to track at DISC. The lovely day had vanished. It was pithing down At track we did several 750 metre (Track TT distance for masters in our category) efforts. My legs hurt.
The roof at DISC leaks. It has leaked since new. Water and wooden velo,s are lethal. I have personally seen a single drop of water cause a girl to crash, at the womens meet a few months ago. There were several spots of water on the track tonight. No crashes. You can see where this multimillion dollar track is being damaged by the water. No one will sort it. I would really like to take an orbital sander with 80 grit paper on it to the knees of the person responsible. Asses. People get hurt on tracks anyway.. no reason to encourage it.
Ian turned up again. Ian is an old mate as I have mentioned before. A friend of well over 20 years standing. A very tough bloke. Ian has had a triple bypass, survived prostrate cancer and beaten the half century. And is now following in his fathers footsteps by playing with track bikes. He is having a ball.
One of the blokes has bought an orange Alchemy.. just like mine. Cool. . Not much meat to this post...so another support story. At Strange Secondary College in Hawthorn one staff member kept trashing his DE@T supplied laptop. When you do maintenance for schools you try for a SOE (Standard Operating Environment ) where you have a bunch of machines the same.. build a good image for them.. develop it properly and drop it on the lot. With these lappys we start with the DE@T (Department of Education and training) supplied image.. customise it for our network.. put the apps we like most. Firefox as well as IE.. and stuff like that and we talk to the teachers.. and if we can get intelligent suggestions out of them and we can get the software legally, then we put that on. And then we re image the machines... and then from this image do a bit of customization on the machines.. setting them up to run for that user on the secure supplied wireless points in the school.. and the like.
Within weeks this useful staff member had trashed his machine. Pretty much by installing every single thing he could find that was cool to install.. Eventually it would barely run. It had like 3 versions of photoshop.. tons of stuff that he did not know what was when asked; more malware than some countries have. 3 sets of anti virus software.. and lots of other stuff. Clean it up. and weeks later, same story. Save data. Reimage machine. Set up for particular staffer (quite a big part of it) and away he goes. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually I set the thing up with an image.... told him I could not save his data and he needed to do backups.. Modified the image for this particular staffer... and saved his very own image. He thus became the only staff member with his very own customized image.
This was because he was special. In a very very special sense of the word 'special'
At a rough guess this staffer was a third of my work load at one time. Funnily enough once he knew he was responsible for his own backups he was much less work.
Ok thats it for bad support stories for a while. Next time I will talk about some of the many lovely people I have worked for.
The roof at DISC leaks. It has leaked since new. Water and wooden velo,s are lethal. I have personally seen a single drop of water cause a girl to crash, at the womens meet a few months ago. There were several spots of water on the track tonight. No crashes. You can see where this multimillion dollar track is being damaged by the water. No one will sort it. I would really like to take an orbital sander with 80 grit paper on it to the knees of the person responsible. Asses. People get hurt on tracks anyway.. no reason to encourage it.
Ian turned up again. Ian is an old mate as I have mentioned before. A friend of well over 20 years standing. A very tough bloke. Ian has had a triple bypass, survived prostrate cancer and beaten the half century. And is now following in his fathers footsteps by playing with track bikes. He is having a ball.
One of the blokes has bought an orange Alchemy.. just like mine. Cool. . Not much meat to this post...so another support story. At Strange Secondary College in Hawthorn one staff member kept trashing his DE@T supplied laptop. When you do maintenance for schools you try for a SOE (Standard Operating Environment ) where you have a bunch of machines the same.. build a good image for them.. develop it properly and drop it on the lot. With these lappys we start with the DE@T (Department of Education and training) supplied image.. customise it for our network.. put the apps we like most. Firefox as well as IE.. and stuff like that and we talk to the teachers.. and if we can get intelligent suggestions out of them and we can get the software legally, then we put that on. And then we re image the machines... and then from this image do a bit of customization on the machines.. setting them up to run for that user on the secure supplied wireless points in the school.. and the like.
Within weeks this useful staff member had trashed his machine. Pretty much by installing every single thing he could find that was cool to install.. Eventually it would barely run. It had like 3 versions of photoshop.. tons of stuff that he did not know what was when asked; more malware than some countries have. 3 sets of anti virus software.. and lots of other stuff. Clean it up. and weeks later, same story. Save data. Reimage machine. Set up for particular staffer (quite a big part of it) and away he goes. Rinse and repeat.
Eventually I set the thing up with an image.... told him I could not save his data and he needed to do backups.. Modified the image for this particular staffer... and saved his very own image. He thus became the only staff member with his very own customized image.
This was because he was special. In a very very special sense of the word 'special'
At a rough guess this staffer was a third of my work load at one time. Funnily enough once he knew he was responsible for his own backups he was much less work.
Ok thats it for bad support stories for a while. Next time I will talk about some of the many lovely people I have worked for.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Election 2010
Not been much to write about this week. The Virtual Assistant stuff is happening. I wasted a day trying to figure a way to reliably back up files from a virtual Linux server to an actual Windows server. There must be a million ways to do this.. and the way I picked just decided to be unduly uncooperative. And I took Carl out to the airport Thursday...and have the exotic powertap wheel in the back room to deliver to a future Olympic Sprinter (I think anyway) 
Other than that a dead, cold and depressing week
I have finally cracked the shits with the fool that had promised to buy Kathys Toyota. Its on Ebay...finishing in a couple of days. Its going for more than $100 more than I offered it to him for. Here is the listing. Hopefully this thing goes. I have a lot more stuff to get rid off. And some to acquire. Specifically I need bookshelves and office chairs. Oh and cartridges for a Lexmark 1255. Got any?
Did the RRR this morning. Followed by brecky. And tomorrow is track. And since this post is light on content.. perhaps a support story from well in the past.. involving of course customers I do not deal with any more. And should not deal with for the sake of my sanity
OK teacher at old employer. A Hawthorn Melbourne Secondary College that shall remain nameless... mostly for the sake of the many useful and smart people that work there. Certainly not for the sake of the few wastes of food and air that worked their. Some few of the staff decided I was their private resource for unpaid work... in a couple of instances I was OK with that.. in a couple of instances.. not on your life.. possibly literally. Anyway.. get rung one evening at home.. "My home computer will not start" "Really", I reply.. "How sad" "Can you come and have a look" "Well indeed I could" (But no chance) "What is it doing?" Apparently nothing. No lights.. etc. "Can you check its plugged in and switched on" "I have already done that.. do you think I am stupid" "Not at all ..... could you just check the plug is in properly and switched on at the wall". "I am sure it is" Sigh.. "Could you please humor me and check" "Just a moment, I,ll have to get a torch?" Huh? "Why do you need a torch" "Cos the lights are all out" Boom tish. Yes indeed I think you are stupid. And why are you not ringing the power company?
Think about the fact that this person may be teaching your children. Scary huh? I have a client at Pyalong. Which is a small country town quite a long way away. He is a very valued client.. on mates rates in spite of the trip. I have loved friends up their.. and when I go up often stay either at the clients or my friends. But he has a terrible environment for computers. Its a commercial hydroponics facility. No its a legitimate one.. they are actually tomatoes. And the office computers have been known to have a half inch or more of mud in them, and in one case actual growing things. Just think of that as proof of how reliable modern electronic equipment actually is. We have in fact come a long way. Which means the machines are tougher and smarter. The people. nah. I am in one of my cynical moods
Because the election has been announced. Our new PM did not completely cave on the mining tax. Its going to apply to only about a quarter of the businesses it was going to apply too. Its going to come in at a higher rate. Yet apparently generate the same income. Not the complete cave I was expecting.. but close. Apparently she saved the country by negotiating it. Anyway.. her election cry will be.. I predict "Moving Forward" The opposition is going to go with the cry.. "Disloyal backstabbing untrustworthy cow who stabbed her boss in the back and wants your trust" Hard to argue with.. being true and all. The opposition does not impress. And the greens do not believe in nuclear power. Who the hell am I going to vote for?
Other than that a dead, cold and depressing week
I have finally cracked the shits with the fool that had promised to buy Kathys Toyota. Its on Ebay...finishing in a couple of days. Its going for more than $100 more than I offered it to him for. Here is the listing. Hopefully this thing goes. I have a lot more stuff to get rid off. And some to acquire. Specifically I need bookshelves and office chairs. Oh and cartridges for a Lexmark 1255. Got any?
Did the RRR this morning. Followed by brecky. And tomorrow is track. And since this post is light on content.. perhaps a support story from well in the past.. involving of course customers I do not deal with any more. And should not deal with for the sake of my sanity
OK teacher at old employer. A Hawthorn Melbourne Secondary College that shall remain nameless... mostly for the sake of the many useful and smart people that work there. Certainly not for the sake of the few wastes of food and air that worked their. Some few of the staff decided I was their private resource for unpaid work... in a couple of instances I was OK with that.. in a couple of instances.. not on your life.. possibly literally. Anyway.. get rung one evening at home.. "My home computer will not start" "Really", I reply.. "How sad" "Can you come and have a look" "Well indeed I could" (But no chance) "What is it doing?" Apparently nothing. No lights.. etc. "Can you check its plugged in and switched on" "I have already done that.. do you think I am stupid" "Not at all ..... could you just check the plug is in properly and switched on at the wall". "I am sure it is" Sigh.. "Could you please humor me and check" "Just a moment, I,ll have to get a torch?" Huh? "Why do you need a torch" "Cos the lights are all out" Boom tish. Yes indeed I think you are stupid. And why are you not ringing the power company?
Think about the fact that this person may be teaching your children. Scary huh? I have a client at Pyalong. Which is a small country town quite a long way away. He is a very valued client.. on mates rates in spite of the trip. I have loved friends up their.. and when I go up often stay either at the clients or my friends. But he has a terrible environment for computers. Its a commercial hydroponics facility. No its a legitimate one.. they are actually tomatoes. And the office computers have been known to have a half inch or more of mud in them, and in one case actual growing things. Just think of that as proof of how reliable modern electronic equipment actually is. We have in fact come a long way. Which means the machines are tougher and smarter. The people. nah. I am in one of my cynical moods
Because the election has been announced. Our new PM did not completely cave on the mining tax. Its going to apply to only about a quarter of the businesses it was going to apply too. Its going to come in at a higher rate. Yet apparently generate the same income. Not the complete cave I was expecting.. but close. Apparently she saved the country by negotiating it. Anyway.. her election cry will be.. I predict "Moving Forward" The opposition is going to go with the cry.. "Disloyal backstabbing untrustworthy cow who stabbed her boss in the back and wants your trust" Hard to argue with.. being true and all. The opposition does not impress. And the greens do not believe in nuclear power. Who the hell am I going to vote for?
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