Doug's Blog

So long since the last post

2009-01-16T21:24:00.003+09:00

Yes, I'm a complete and utter disgrace. I've neglected this blog terribly. But I'm going to try and get back into the swing of blogging.

What's changed since my last post? Quite a lot I suspect. For starters, I have some awesome new friends. G'day to Ashton, Nathan, Dan, Kerrick, Bill, Mike, Patrick and Alcon, all people I've met along the way and all of whom I count as good friends.

Nothing really to say tonight, other than I'm off to the Grand Prix in Melbourne in March, which will be a blast I'm sure!

Mondays...

2007-08-13T21:38:00.000+08:00

Why do crazy things always happen on Mondays?

The network at work was having a psychotic episode for most of the morning and the worst part is that I don't know why. Was it my predecessor, fiddling with things and breaking them? Was it something to do with the server crash about three months before I started there, or did aliens come and bugger things up over the weekend?

Either way, it's not good for the stress levels - I don't mind things going wrong, but things that go wrong for no apparent reason, with no obvious solution, really try my patience :)

Minesweeper - the movie

2007-08-08T20:06:00.003+08:00

Where do people get their ideas for this sort of stuff? :)

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2007/08/07/brilliant-video-if-minesweeper-was-a-movie/

A decent pub lunch

2007-08-08T17:13:00.000+08:00

Anthony and I went for lunch today at the Moon and Sixpence in the city. Lunch was a plate of crumbed chicken breast topped with ham and melted cheese, served on mashed potato with roasted vegetables and gravy.

The perfect drink to go along with that would have to be a pint of Bulmers Cider.

Yumm-o!

BOFH meets BTDFH

2007-08-06T21:33:00.000+08:00

Ok as a good sysadmin, I'm familiar with BOFH of course. But it looks like mine is not the only industry to have to suffer its way through stupid people.

I present ... for your reading pleasure and amusement: The Blank Top Chronicles - a very BOFHish look at the murky world of taxi dispatch.

Birthday Party and Phone Stuff

2007-08-06T14:08:00.001+08:00

It was Anthony's 18th birthday celebration on Saturday. Dinner for family and friends was at Jimmy Dean's Diner in Scarborough, followed by a night at Burswood casino.

I had a great time, even though I lost badly at the casino. The gods must have been smiling on Anthony though - he came home with more money than he started with which is always good!

I've updated my phone to the Windows Mobile 6 operating system. Reports and reviews on the Web suggest that WM6 is more stable and responsive and in the few days that I've been using it, I'd have to agree.

As well as the OS update, I've added a few little utility programs - one thing I missed from Windows Mobile 2003 on my O2 smartphone was the automatic profile change from Normal to Meeting when in a scheduled appointment time. I've since found a utility to do that in WM5/6.

Books

2007-07-21T21:12:00.000+08:00

My god ... has it been that long since I wrote something? I must be up for an award for the world's least prolific blogger or something!

Just finished reading the third book of a trilogy:

The basic premise is a combination of a historical war novel with a sci-fi twist. A modern day (actually slightly futuristic) group of warships gets transported back in time to the middle of World War II with interesting consequences.

John Birmingham is an Australian author, with his own blog, newspaper column, and a series of popular books.

I'm pleased to say that the Axis of Time trilogy was worth every second. I highly recommend it.

Gotta love TV journalism

2007-03-07T19:42:00.000+09:00

OK so apart from the fact that I haven't blogged in ages, which I'm just going to conveniently ignore ...

Watching "A Current Affair" tonight, I heard a world-class stupid comment from one of their so-called journalists. On a segment about junk food, the voiceover said "We are all uniquely different".

Golly. Really!?!

TEE

2006-11-05T22:29:00.000+08:00

To Anthony and all his friends about to enter the mayhem that is the yearly Tertiary Entrance Exam, best of luck and I hope everything goes well.

I look back on my own TEE many years ago and all I can think is "thank god it's not me going through it again!"

:-)

MSN / Windows Live Messenger a bit broken ...

2006-09-11T21:12:00.000+08:00

Temporary fix for MSN Messenger problems

The following might fix connection problems to MSN Messenger's servers if you are unable to connect. This temporary fix reroutes outgoing connections to the server to a specific server address that's actually working.

I've tried it on my laptop with Windows Live Messenger v8.1 beta and it worked fine for me, however if you try this on your PC and bugger up Windows, don't blame me!! :-)

STEP 1: Click on Start / All Programs / Accessories / Notepad

STEP 2: Click on the File menu of Notepad and choose Open.

STEP 3: In the File name box, copy and paste the following line, then click the Open button:

%WINDIR%\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS

You should see a text file with "This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows"

STEP 4: At the bottom of the text file, copy and paste the following two
lines:

65.54.239.80 messenger.hotmail.com
65.54.239.80 dp.msnmessenger.akadns.net

STEP 5: Close Notepad and when it asks if you want to save the changed file, choose Yes.

STEP 6: Open MSN Messenger and try to connect. Hopefully it now works!

In a couple of days time, try removing the two extra lines from your HOSTS file and reconnecting to MSN Messenger as this is only a temporary workaround not a permanent fix...

Birthday

2006-09-09T13:50:00.000+08:00

As I was saving my previous post, I noticed that my blog will be one year in two days. :) I really need to do a bit better in sitting down and writing stuff instead of this posting once in a blue moon deal I seem to have fallen into.

What a week!

2006-09-09T13:47:00.000+08:00

Wow - what a week it's been. First of all the news of Steve Irwin's death shot all round the world, causing many Australian news sites to go into meltdown.

Then we hear that author Colin Thiele also died. I remember reading "Storm Boy" as a kid, he wrote some excellent stories.

And last of all, the death of Peter "Perfect" Brock in Gidgegannup yesterday.

All three gentlemen were an asset to Australia and will be missed.

Party!

2006-07-02T19:12:00.000+08:00

Last night I went to a party and had a great time. Thanks to Anthony for hosting and to Lauren, Sandra, Anthony J, Daniel, Nathan, Harry, Mr Paul, Todd and Jesse for being good company.

Today was a struggle, not enough sleep last night. My brain feels fuzzy :-)

Useless ISP

2006-06-26T10:37:00.000+08:00

Soon I will be rid of the poor escuse for an ISP called Amcom. Since they bought out my previous ISP Arachnet, things have never been very good and eventually we'd all had enough and decided to leave.

Even after sending a fax on the 9th June giving clear instructions on cancelling my account and removing the ADSL line codes, they've still managed to stuff it up and while I'll have no Internet service from today, I'll still have an ADSL signal on my line registered to Amcom which will stop me from signing up with a new provider.

Let this be a warning to anyone considering Amcom as an ISP :-) I also posted about my experience here on Whirlpool ...

Red Shield Appeal

2006-05-29T13:41:00.000+08:00

I spent the weekend collecting money for The Salvation Army's Red Shield Appeal. I learned a few interesting things from it.

I'm nowhere near as fit as I should be. In fact I'm somewhere off the scale on the "UNFIT" side...
Older people seem to be more willing to give than younger people. Those in more "affluent" houses - manicured lawn, perfect garden beds, two cars and a boat in the driveway for example - are less likely to give money.
It doesn't seem to matter if you collect on a Saturday or a Sunday, both days have their advantages and disadvantages - on Saturday a lot of people aren't home because they go out shopping and on Sunday a lot of people aren't home because they are going doing sports or other activities.
We can never find enough people to doorknock all of Perth... If only we had more collectors
A good pair of shoes or boots are essential to doing doorknocking :-)

In all, I had a great time as usual - my team and I collected just short of $500 which was fantastic. In the media today they Salvos are reporting that they are on target to have $7million in donations by the end of the appeal.

I feel old ...

2006-05-21T20:11:00.000+08:00

Reading an article on NASA's website about the very first shuttle launch on April 12th, 1981 I realised that some of my friends weren't even born then! Crap. It's times like that you just feel so old.....

I've finally splashed out and got myself a new chair for when I'm at the computer. After the demise of the one I scored from work about three years ago, I was relegated to using a dining room table chair which was too low and didn't swivel.

Now I've got a new one from Officeworks which is all very nice and leather-ey. Half price too, down to $99 :-)

Hair cuts

2006-05-01T21:42:00.000+08:00

What's with the ridiculous price of getting a hair cut nowadays?

Out of the two hairdressers within walking distance of home, one of them has shut up shop and the other one thinks it can charge $23 for a simple cut.

Time to look elsewhere...

Thursday night dinners

2006-03-09T21:16:00.000+08:00

We have a bit of a tradition in our house that on Thursday night, we have take-away ... since it's shopping night and all.

We used to alternate between pizza and fish and chips. But for the past few weeks we've had fish and chips every week. I was missing my pizza until we had it tonight then I was really missing my fish and chips.

Can't win!!!

School Balls ... and the weather!

2006-02-21T18:29:00.000+08:00

Anthony had his Year 12 ball the other night and I've got to say, he scrubs up pretty well :-)

The weather's revolting at the moment. It got as high as 40 degrees this morning but then a band of thunderstorms came through, dropping the temperature but making everything feel like a sauna. With evaporative air conditioning, that means that everything in the house feels damp and clammy. Tonight's minimum is going to be 26 degrees, way too hot to sleep comfortably. Ugh.

Camping

2006-01-08T20:44:00.000+08:00

Tomorrow I'm off camping down in the south-west somewhere. Haven't decided on the exact location yet, probably alongside a river somewhere...

I'm happy with my new car, the camping gear fits inside pretty well. Apart from the big esky for the perishable food, the two gas bottles, and my clothes, everything's in the boot.

My only dilemma now is I saw a 3-way fridge in KMart yesterday for under $500. All the 3-way fridges (they're the ones that run on 240v, 12v and LPGas) have been priced over $1,000. So ... I really want to buy it but I'm not sure if I'll use it enough to make it worthwhile... After all, the last time I went camping was October '04. Hmmmmmmm

Awesome Airshow!

2005-11-20T21:30:00.000+08:00

Wow. The airshow at RAAF Pearce was fantastic (except for the touch of heatstroke and a mild case of sunburn...) I'll be putting photos up on my gallery shortly, but for the moment, here's a teaser :-)

RAAF Airshow

2005-11-17T19:42:00.000+08:00

I'm planning on going to the RAAF Airshow at Pearce Airbase on Sunday. There's a website all about it here... I'll definitely be taking my camera along, should get some good photos...

Ugh

2005-10-31T19:16:00.000+08:00

I feel like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards :-( Starting Friday night I got a cough, which became aching joints and a thumping headache. It could be a bad dose of hay fever, or a cold, or even the dreaded bird flu! (just kidding...)

Whatever it is, I wish it'd go away. I hate staying home from work and watching horrible daytime TV. I'm sure it's all a conspiracy to make daytime TV so brain draining as to force people to go back to work just to get away from it.

Busy weekend ...

2005-10-24T11:54:00.000+08:00

A busy weekend of motor racing - V8 Supercars, Gold Coast Champ Cars, MotoGP and A1GP.

The A1GP keeps getting better and better. Good, close, tight, exciting racing that's a pleasure to watch.

And for a bonus, I went playing pool on Saturday with Anthony and some of his friends, which was great. Haven't played pool for years and despite my general lack of skill, managed not to disgrace myself totally :-)

Beer

2005-10-16T21:45:00.000+08:00

Well some of the beer that Anthony and I have been brewing is starting to taste pretty good... I think the ginger beer we did is still my favourite, but the "Morgan's Lager" is also pretty good...

Now that we're all set up with the gear and stuff, it's time to start saving some money... Doing that maths, it should be much cheaper making beer rather than buying from a shop.

Buying a carton of beer costs between $35 and $40. This works out to roughly $4 per litre.

Making our own costs around $25 for the ingredients, then say another $5 or so for consumables such as bottle caps, sterilising solution and so on. One batch makes 22.5 litres, which works out to less than $1.50 a litre.

The value of backups

2005-09-30T08:15:00.000+08:00

Disaster! My laptop's hard drive has completely died, taking all the data with it. I have some backups, but the most recent is from May this year. At least I did a more recent backup of my mail file in the days before the crash so that'll be a bonus.

Thankfully, laptop hard drives are a lot cheaper than they used to be - I've replaced the original 60 gig drive with an 80 gig. The original install of Windows is back on, now I've got the fun job of installing all my programs and restoring data from the May backup...

Even though we all know on an intellectual level that backups are important, why it is human nature to put off doing them because "I've never needed it in the past"? I think it might be time to become a little more self-disciplined about backing my data up...

A1 Grand Prix

2005-09-26T13:59:00.000+08:00

Watched the new A1 Grand Prix from Brands Hatch last night and it's pretty damn good! This is what Formula One used to be like, before they started messing around trying to slow the cars down.

I'll defintely be watching more A1 races when they come up...

Broken Lift

2005-09-23T15:22:00.000+08:00

There's nothing worse than getting to work and finding that the lift is broken ... again.

It's only two floors I have to go up, but when you're carrying a bag, a coffee and a bacon-and-egg sandwich and you have to organise opening doors and stuff, it's a pain in the backside!

(Plus I'm terribly unfit and arrive at the 2nd floor puffing and panting)

Lost Camping Gear

2005-09-20T22:58:00.000+08:00

That's odd... I seem to have lost some of the gear I bought to go camping.

Went looking for the cutlery set (knife/fork/spoon in a little plastic wallet) tonight and I can't find it anywhere.

Either it's lost, or I've got an extra special hiding place that I don't remember :-)

I think I'm going senile...

2005-09-13T20:40:00.000+08:00

Got home from work and decided to do a load of washing. Got all the clothes in, closed the lid, pressed the go button and everything's great.

Except for one thing.

No detergent.

AAAAARGH!!!

So after giving the clothes a very good rinsing, it's now getting a proper wash :-)

Driving vs Public Transport

2005-09-13T09:32:00.000+08:00

I was having a bit of a think this morning about which is better, to take public transport to and from work, or to drive the car.

After throwing together a bit of a spreadsheet to calculate the fuel and parking costs for driving vs the cost of a Multi-Rider, it looks like it's a little bit cheaper to take public transport - only by a couple of dollars a week, but as fuel costs go up, the savings will increase.

Free Parking

2005-09-12T13:35:00.000+08:00

Got to work today and realised that it *wasn't* my rostered day for the spare parking bay in the basement.

But rather than pay for parking (all-day in the City of Perth multi-storey car park is $5.80 I think) I'm spending the day doing the free-parking shuffle.

Started off in a bay behind the office - that got me 2 hours. Moved to over near Wellington Square - another 2 hours. Just finished moving the car back to near work which'll get me to 3:30. Then I just have to find one more bay to get me through the last hour and I'm done :-) (Looking in the basement, there's two of our bays currently unoccupied by managers. If one of them is gone for the rest of the day I might just sneak in there)

Yep, I know I'm a cheapskate!!! :-)

Seen on the road

2005-09-12T09:02:00.000+08:00

Saw a plumber's van on Hutton street with the number plate "POO WEE" :-) How cool is that!

Sunday Movie

2005-09-12T00:43:00.000+08:00

Just finished watching "Strange Bedfellows" on Channel 9 with Michael Caton and Paul Hogan. I hadn't had a chance to see this movie before but I'd heard it was funny... They were right, it's hilarious! :-)

For more info, see this page on IMDB.

Toddler + Keyboard = Chaos

2005-09-11T18:21:00.000+08:00

My 15 month old nephew was sitting on my lap while I was using the computer. Suddenly Bash Bash Bash on the keyboard and chaos starts - windows were opening, things were being deleted, all sorts of fun :-)

But what can I say - he's cute and adorable ... Better to give him a keyboard of his own to bash on while I can do my stuff.

First Post

2005-09-11T16:00:00.000+08:00

Wow. First post.

I have no idea what to write - publishing one's own blog seems like such an easy idea to begin with, UNTIL faced with a text box to actually write something.

Watching the V8 Supercars at the moment from Sandown Racecourse. 30-ish laps to go and it's raining. I've been concentrating so much on setting up this blog that I've lost track of who's in the lead. :-)