Award Winner

One of my Dad's oldest long time friends recently won the Most outstanding contribution to journalism award at the 2005 Northern NSW Journalism Awards.

Retired NBN Television camera operator Glenn Cook won the inaugural "Most Outstanding Contribution To Journalism" award, sponsored by Energy Australia.

Congratulations Glenn!

Mail server woes

The mail server that I set up for a real estate office in Perth decided over the weekend to die. I have spent the last couple of days setting up a temporary server, and looking into why the original server died in the first place. The original server is a Postfix installation on a Clarkconnect box. It is only booting to the GRUB prompt at the moment, which means that I physically have to be there to fix it. That means that I will need to make a trip to Perth this weekend after I finish work on Saturday at lunch time. I am hoping that I can get the machine to boot again without any loss of data. There should be a recent backup, but I have been able to check up on that yet. I will cross my fingers and hope all goes well on the weekend.

USB Wireless connection

I am so happy right now. I just saved myself thousands of dollars! I was really wanting a new laptop for myself, with a wireless connection. Stacey has one and is able to use her laptop and get on the internet from the loungeroom, where I have been confined to the study if I wanted to get online. A couple of months ago, my Grandpa came through town and bought himself a new laptop becuase his was starting to have a few problems. He left his old one with me, as he had no use for it (let alone space in his car). I have had it sitting here for a while now, and on Saturday I saw this Belkin USB wifi adapter come through work. I have now just spent my lunch time setting it up on the old laptop (Windows 98 SE) and am writing this post from my lounge room! I love it. Anyway, lunch is over so it's back to work.

Doctor Who

I just finished watching the last episode in the current season of Doctor Who. Brilliant! It's a shame the see Christopher Eccleston go, I thought he was a really good Doctor and would have liked to see a few more story lines with him. Spoiler warning if you haven't seen the last episode yet. It's good to see Billie Piper will continue on next season. She adds some female intelligence to the show. I was also left wondering if Captain Jack will continue or whether he is left standed in time. I doubt it, but that doesn't mean that he will meet up with the Doctor and Rose anytime soon. We can only hope.

Biggest Upset in Cricket History

Australian cricket has hit rock bottom. The Aussie Team lost to Bangaladesh. They need to start playing as a team. They should be so ashamed and if they don't smash England tonight, then drastic changes should be made to the team. Bring in some young blood who want to play and win for their country. These current players seem a little complacent.

929 Streaming

Ok, so I live in the country and can't receive Perth radio stations other than online. No big deal, I have broadband so I can stream the radio stations that I want to listen to if the mood takes me. At least I thought I could. 92.9 streaming is awful. First the window does not open unless you are using Internet Explorer, Firefox is out. Second, I have two monitors hooked up to my PC and I happened to have IE open on the right hand screen. "Sorry, we have detected that you have moved the advertisement screen". WTF? I didn't move it, but I expect they are looking for it at 0,0 instead of where it opened on my screen at 1248,0. Huh? Advertisement window? That doesn't sit right with me, but more about that in a bit. Once I sat through the advertisement, I was helpfully informed that I have pop-up blocking software running on my machine. NO SHIT "Please turn off you pop-up blocking software". And that is where I stopped. This thing is set up solely for advertising. From what I can see here they are trying to double up on the ad hit. Am I mistaken? Doesn't 92.9 play advertisements on the radio? Don't they also include that on the internet stream? Why should I have to wait through and ad before I start listening, let them put up more ads while I'm listening and then play ads on the radio which is what I am listening to? I think that 92.9 and the AusStereo network are being way too greedy. You just lost a listener. I was also trying out their new podcasting service, which by the way didn't have any noticable ads. I have unsubscribed from that feed now; I don't feel like supporting their efforts. Compare this experience to listening to Triple j who just increased their stream to 128kbps. One click and I'm listening.

Plasma Season

In the four months I have been at my current job, we hadn't sold a single plasma screen. Now in the last 2 weeks we have sold 2! I don't know what it is, but both of them were sold to people in Gnowangerup. We now have a gaping big 'hole' on the shelf where these two plasmas were. We will probably replace them with some LCD screens as they seem to be more the rage now. They don't have the same "burn in" effect that plasmas do when you leave the same image on the screen for a long time. Once we get the new screens we will probably link the Media Centre PC up to one of them. Those things are great (if a little expensive). You can watch tv, pause live tv when the phone rings, watch anything you download off the net, rip all your cds, listen to AM/FM radio, play a slideshow of all your pictures and more! But for $3000 you'd want all of that and more.

Thank god it's Friday

I am looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend watching my favourite sports. West Coast play Saturday afternoon after I finish work and 2 games of cricket!! Let's just hope that the Aussies can get back on track and start playing as a team if not winning.

Lots of late nights

The next couple of months are going to contain a lot of late nights. Why you may ask? It's cricket season again! The Ashes series is about to start, and that means late nights watching the games on TV. I am so glad that the free to air networks worked something out with the cricket. There was one stage earlier in the year where I thought I might have to sign up to Foxtel just to watch the cricket. The only bad thing so far is that the cricket starts at 5.30pm this Saturday, and GWN/Channel7 are cutting in half an hour later to show 30 minutes of news. Is it so hard to put the news on 1 hour earlier at 5pm? I reckon they would get a whole heap of complaints from people if they moved 7 news. Do these people have no life that they can't go without news at the regular time? Is it so hard to change the channel to 9 and watch a different news? At least SBS should show uninterupted play when the test matches start.

My first comment

I got my first comment on this blog recently. And no, it wasn't one of my friends (who I am sure hardly ever read this). The funny thing is that it seems (from what I can tell) it was a teacher from Perth. I seem to be surrounded by teachers! Stacey, Daniel, my sister and now a random commenter on my blog!

Graduate Position Update

I received an email the other day about the graduate position I applied for:

Dear Christopher,

Congratulations! You have been short-listed to participate in a telephone interview for a graduate position in Perth.

...

The purpose of the telephone interview is to learn more about your background and experience. There will be no technical questions at this stage of the process.

Now it is all down to me and how I interview. I got through the initial culling stage where they disregard you without predudice.

It's finally cold!

As I write this it is currently 6.4°C The cold weather has finally arrived and looks like sticking around. The highest temperature in the last 72 hours was 12.4°C almost 3 days ago! It's almost like being back in Europe, but without the snow. In fact that would really make my day, I'd love it to snow big time.

The Need for Speed...

Or what counts for speed in this country. At the start of the month I upgraded my internet to 1.5Mbps. It's only costing me $4 more each month than what I am used to paying. I get a 10% discount with my internet provider now because where I work is an agent for them. So instead of paying $59.95 a month for 512kbps with a 14/14GB download limit, I am now paying $63.96 for 1.5Mbps with 10/10GB download limit. The download limit isn't really a big deal, as a lot of my downloads are from the free peering network in WA. This month so far I have downloaded: Peak: 802.65 MB Off Peak: 186.98 MB Free Peak: 5,314.75 MB Free Off Peak: 2,790.89 MB

Not so expensive

So it wasn't as expensive as I thought to get my car fixed. It only cost me $230.40. Now all I need to get done to it is the bearing in the clutch of the air conditioning system. Thank goodness the temperature is only getting upto 16°C around here these days. I shouldn't need to get it fixed for another couple of months.

Arrrrrrrgh!

So the worst thing wrong with my car is that both bearings on the left hand side need replacing. It should be fine after that for a while. The other thing wrong with it is a bearing in the air conditioning system, but that is not vital to the running of the car. Cost of initial repares: $495

Money, money, money

I am taking my car in to get fixed tomorrow. Hopefully it won't cost too much. They had a quick look at it yesterday and it sounds like a bearing in the water pump. The bearings in the front wheels are also making one hell of a noise. The lesson here is never drive through more than a puddle on the road. It just aint worth it.