ramblings of a wandering nerdan aimless amble on a winding road

Well in about a weeks time I’d have had my Macbook for 1year. It’s been a quick year and a pretty steep learning curve. Simple stuff like short cut keys and the fact the minimize/close buttons are on opposite sides of the screen have made it fun and annoying to get used to.

Would I swap? Not for the world. I truely am a Mac convert. I find myself eagerly awaiting Snow Leopard. I’m interested to see Windows 7 but having been burned enough, Windows ME, Windows Vista, Office 2007, is there any reason to give Microsoft another try? I think not.

Although Windows 7 is fairing well in the media. I came across this article on Friday.

If you have a PC and you want the upcoming Microsoft OS, but don’t want to buy a new computer, Microsoft has your back. The minimum specifications listed on the Windows 7 RC download page are a 1 GHz Processor, 1 GB RAM, and 16GB of free hard disk space. This means if you have a computer that is more than a few years old, you can still get some functionality from the latest OS rolling out of Redmond. Intel hit the 1 GHz processor mark on March 8 2000, which means theoretically Windows 7 could run on computers over 9 years old! Since Microsoft is known for understating their hardware requirements, I grabbed an old PC out of retirement and put it to test.

The PC I chose had an Intel P3 933 MHz processor, 768 MB of RAM, and an 80GB hard disk. My test subject was manufactured in 2001.

I particularly like “Microsoft has your back”. Yeah right. Exchange 2007 - rip & replace. Exchange 2010 - rip & replace. Microsoft Vista - Even NEW PC’s have trouble running that busted OS. Microsoft has your back. Sure.

And after replacing half the hardware to get the thing to install, performance was crap. There is no denying it. Could it be done. Sure. Was it usable? If you were slow I’m sure it would be. But in a day where I can go to Dick Smith, JB HiFi’s or even Harvey Norman and grab a PC under $1000 (under $800 if I look hard enough) or a Notebook even cheaper, the damn license is going to cost you half the price of a new PC (with an OEM copy included).

This looks like a neat project. This combines two of my interests. Transport and Engineering.

A little closer to home though, I read this yesterday. It does raise some very interesting points. The numbers are huge and seem, in comparison to other projects, somewhat inflated. I find it interesting that the government admits to not knowing how to price it and not having anyone experienced enough to build it. Surely there is someone in the world capable of helping? We don’t want these clowns doing it alone. Now I’m extra interested in this because this is closer to where I’ll be living.

One of the estates we looked at (and dismissed early on) actually had space already marked for the rail extension. Not this first stage, but down the track. If it ever does eventuate, It’ll only be about a 10 minute drive from ‘home’. Let’s hope they get it right and start the second stage sooner rather than later.

Well isn’t this interesting. With the exception of night clubs (Pubs are more focused on live music so I don’t see recorded music in pubs as that big an issue) does music really define a venue? Can anyone say their favourite cafe is their favourite because of the music they play? Doesn’t it have more to do with the brilliant coffee, the cute barista or simply the best location. Music may add to the feel of a place but it sure as hell doesn’t make it.

Mr Healey said illegal internet downloads were robbing the music industry of its main income source — CD sales — and the PPCA was looking for other ways to make money for record companies.

Moves such as these surely see rise to an INCREASE in piracy as more and more say ‘F&#K you’ to the bastards that stole the cafe music?

I’ve said it before and I’ll damn well say it again. If I ever see Britney Spears or ACDC out on the streets, I’ll stand up and take piracy a little more seriously. But while they’re still raking in million after million, I don’t see too much of a problem.

is more guns..

Awesome…

Swine Flu, Recession, Interst Rates, Terrorism, Global Financial Crisis, Global Warming, Boat People….

Did I miss anything?

Honestly, how boring are we as a people. We’re not happy until we’re miserable. How seriously boring is that.

This morning as I grabbed a coffee (Yay I can still afford one!) I noticed the front page of the herald sun was about house prices crashing. argh! My house is going to be worth nothing. Oh no.. After the fear and panic subsided (well actually after I finished rolling my eyes) I gave the article a quick glance and realised that, well the problem wasn’t really that bad. If the price of your $2 million dollar mansion falls $100k do I really care? Well no I don’t. Do I care if my house price has fallen $10k.. Well no because I I’m currently using it for SHELTER.

So anyway, I found it very odd when I got home and did a quick scan of news.com.au (in case you don’t know, they’re both part of the News Ltd group). And what did I find? Hold on to your hat! A contradiction… The medium price actually rose 1.6% in the quarter.

So what the hell?

Apparently median house prices dropped $13k last quarter… apparently 15% in the past 15 months.

What the HELL!

Honestly, are these clowns actually reading what they are printing?

Two different papers, single owner, two completely different stores, SAME day!

news.com.au has Melb median house prices at $441k and the herald sun has us at $410k.

And a 15% drop from $450k at the height would see us around $390k so no matter which way you look at it, this is crap! Total and utter crap!

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES.

And some wisdom from the editorial section… Insightful

Lets not even look at this pretty graph.

It makes me dizzy just thinking about it.

So after the disappointment and annoyance of the Simonds debacle, we have engaged another builder. Like a child burnt by a hotplate, we are anxious and approaching with extreme caution.

This particular builder does about 400 homes a year, which is considerably less than the 1500+ Simonds does. We’re hoping this will provide a more personal experience. Apparently there is limited backoffice work done, with most of it occuring with the Salesman.

From the Salesmans point of view, it’s better for them because they have more control over their commission. Simonds sales guys do the hard sell, then send it off at which point, due to the extreme incompetence of their backoffice admin staff, th deals sometimes don’t get done, costing the sales guys their commission.

This doesn’t happen with the new builder, which should for us, lead to an overall better result. Admin staff afterall don’t get paid by commission so have very little reason to perform well. Incompetance we know, is rarely a fireable offence these days.

So on Monday I sent an email around midday and it was responded to by the time I got home at about 4:30 that afternoon. Impressive.

On Tuesday I sent through some marked up plans with the expectation of getting a quote by the end of this weekend. I got an email last night appologising and stating I’ll have it by Tuesday or Wednesday. This was a pleasent change. I don’t mind that things don’t get done, I just object to not being told.

So to date, and it is only early days, this builder has two ticks.

Their base prices are higher, but I received confirmation during the week that 2700mm ceilings and eaves are included in the base price (amongst a whole series of things) which is great.

One thing all the volume builders do is keep the price as low as possible by leaving out pretty much everything you need to have a house you could actually live in. It’s basically the same as the airlines advertising airfares without taxes. We know we have to pay them so be honest at the onset. Of course with houses, it’s not always obvious that the simplest of things are no included.

So we sit patiently and wait for the price. There is definitely a better vibe about this builder!

Oh, and we added another person to the ‘Not going to build a Simonds home” campaign. Yah, two more to go.. If it looks like it’s going to be too easy to reach 5, maybe I’ll set my sights on 10.!

Well I keep saying it but I seem to be losing time. A lot of it!

As previously mentioned, we are in the process of building a new house. The lot is purchased and up until last Wednesday night, a builder had been selected.

The builder was Simonds.

Why did we choose a volume builder? Well, two reasons. Obviously firstly, they were cheaper, but secondly, they actually had a design we liked. Yay we said.

Anyway, because of the location and fall on the land, we decided to speak with them prior to purchasing the land. After an inspection from the sales guy, and then a followup check from the construction manager, the all clear was given to buy the land. They, in late February, were happy to build on the lot.

Now, two months later, they’ve decided they’re no longer going to build on it. The customer service was terrible. Phones never answered, voice mail never returned, email never replied to.

So, with the building scheduled to commence in June, we’re now back to the start.

As you can imagine, this has been incredibly frustrating and a complete waste of time.

What was more annoying was the arrogant rude manager that told us. It’s one thing to deliver bad news, no one wants to hear it etc etc, but he decided to answer phone calls, check messages and lecture us on the importance of ‘buyer beware’. Hmm wait a sec, isn’t that what we did?

Given there poor handing of this from start to finish, I’m committed to stopping 5 people from building with them. I’m hoping to cost them a million dollars (not including us).

Given their terrible customer service, I think it’s a blessing in disguise that we didn’t build with them. This could have been a 12 month nightmare. Fortunately, it’s only been a waste of 3 months of my life.

Anyway, having put that experience behind us, the hunt for a builder continues.

No I’m not going retro. This look isn’t to stay. I’m just changing web hosts. Lunarpages were up for renewal and I just wasn’t all that happy with them. For some reason it got really slow over the past couple of months so I’m trying justhost.com. There’s been mixed comments in the web hosting community but most seemed to be support related. I’m a pretty simple user so hopefully I won’t be bothered by any support issues.

So far so good. Seem to be quite a bit faster (from here anyway).

So hopefully it’ll be fully restored soon.

Who cares?

Well apparently the herald sun does. It was FRONT PAGE yesterday.

I think it’s a sign of a GREAT Prime Minister when the worst dirt a newspaper can dig up on the current Prime Minister is that he yelled at an air hostess.

Lets look, we are in two wars (one of which has seen us lose two soldiers in the past 3 weeks), the world economy is collapsing, cyclones, bush fires and floods are seeing natural disasters kill people and destroy property and lives at an scary rate, unemployment is rising and the greatest criticism of the man in the top job is that he yelled at someone.

So why did he yell?

Of all the people on the VIP plane, he was, obviously the most important person on it. He wasn’t flying Jetstar, he wasn’t flying with the US President, or the British PM or the Chinese President or the Russian President or any other world leader so yes, he was the most important person on the plane. And he couldn’t get the damn meal he wanted.

How, when you’re the most important person on a plane, in fact the sole purpose of the journey was to transport this important person, can this person not get the meal he wanted?

So he didn’t pre-order. When you’re the VIP I would have thought making sure you had his meal covered would be a pretty easy thing to get right?

So anyway, PM or not, come on… Who doesn’t get annoyed when they can’t get what they want?

I think this article, while a complete waste of ink, was a glowing endorsement of Kevin Rudd. Not only is he human (I think a lot of people think he might be part robot) but the worst thing he’s doing at the moment, in the face of so many problems, is make someone cry.

Go Kevin!

As for the 250 people who didn’t like his apology, well, deal with it. As for the air hostess who cried, well… deal with it. Life’s full of confrontation and uncomfortable moments. What doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.

The old adage, when it rains it pours seems to be as true as ever.

Work is seriously busy at the moment. I’m about to clock up two years with my current employer and while in a lot of ways the move was a sideways one, I have in recent months been doing some interesting work. A lot of this work I’ve sought out myself and some of it just seems to have come my way. Either way I’m not complaining, although the constant switching between this work and the mundane day to day work of a mail administrator is somewhat frustrating.

Two of the more interesting pieces of work are the designing of a new directory and enhancing the Blackberry service.

The new directory will be Domino based but has some really interesting interactions with the helpdesk system, HR and some other user managed directories. While I’m not doing the coding (for that everyone is grateful!) I’m helping with the design and documentation. As this progresses I’m sure it will re-affirm my commitment to steering my career toward enterprise architecture, that elusive goal.

The other work is, as mentioned, Blackberry related. Monitoring, automating provisioning tasks, delivering new functionality, a global WiFi deployment within company offices for data transfer (and maybe voip) and investigating PBX integration (one number to rule the world! - well your life at least) are all interesting and time consuming tasks on my plate at the moment. As a piece of technology (It’s well beyond gadgetry) I love it! While I complain constantly about it’s lack of administrative friendliness, it is todays Linux. It can be such a pain in the butt to do anything with, but as you roll up your sleeves, you get the feeling most things are possible, and the ‘down and dirty’ work you have to do gives you that extra special feeling of satisfaction when you nail it!

But beyond work, I’ve been battling away with Uni. Kate graduated last week which gave me renewed interest in getting to mine. The ceremony was almost a religious affair. Having never been to one before, I didn’t know what to expect but I definitely left feeling I had just witnessed something sacred. I can only imagine what graduation ceremonies at some of the worlds oldest and well known would be like!

Anyway, hopefully I’ll resume more regular blogging soon.