TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

I’ve been watching closely (or is that casually) to try and find the source of many of my drop outs and see if I can isolate it, or do something to slow them or stop them.

Unfortunately, they continue to happen.

Tonight, at around midnight, it dropped out, and came back later, and dropped out. So I thought OK, maybe its just the fast, fast speed that is the cause of it, so I figure, we’ll take it off ADSL2+ and put it on ADSL2.

That syncs at around 9Mbit, which is OK if it can hold it, and I was sure that we’d be able to get some great reliability from it.

That theory proved wrong, the last drop out not so long ago confirmed.

The pattern so far seems to have been late at night, with not many problems during the day, but I really want to try and get this solid if I can to maintain sync speed, and stop from dropping out (not that it affects us in the middle of the night, but still a royal pain if it happens during the day).

So, after the drop out before, I’ve locked it down to G.DMT, which means we cop a bit of a drop in upload from 812 to 750, but if its stable, it can stay there.

Our sync speed drops even further from 9Mbit on ADSL2, down to 8064 on ADSL1 (the fast it can go generally).

If the drop outs continue in ADSL1 mode, the next best thing might be to either log a fault and see if they can do anything to isolate and make it better for us, or, go with plan B and lock it down to ADSL1 at the ADSL port.

Naturally, we have the other option, which is relocate away from the crappy line, onto another line (ie. change address), but we can’t do that for 12 months at least (which might raise a newer, ports not available issue).

I’m hoping it stops the drop outs in ADSL1 mode, I really like the flexibility of being able to change it to ADSL2+ if we want the extra speed, and back down to ADSL1 if we want stability, although would much rather stable ADSL2+.

It could simply be our Billion modem is too aggressive for the line we have, and that’s causing it, or perhaps the copper needs a bit of a checkover and Telstra can spend some of those ‘line maintenance’ dollars on actual line maintenance.

We’ll soon find out I suppose. Most drop outs have been happening in the 2am – 3am or so area, so, they don’t affect us normally, but finding the issue and getting that fixed would be ideal.

The cheaper plan, the faster speeds are definitely worth it however.

Enjoy!

Our sync speed on ADSL2+ is now at a fantastic 10Mbit, with 812kbit out, with the introduction of a Billion 5200 to the network lineup.

That device saw the retirement of the trusty D-Link DSL-504T, which just wasn’t cutting it for ADSL2+ with 8Mbit, 800kbps.

ADSL2+ has an inherent disadvantage, however. The property we rent has a socket that isn’t attached to the wall.

To make matters worse, it’s a lowset house, and bricked at the bottom, and to make it even worse, the lead in cable drilled through the floor to the first socket is like 1cm long. So, if there’s a break on the socket or the cable, and new wire needs to be stripped back and attached, it’s not going to be pretty, with some poor schmoo needing to crawl underneath the house, and probably terminate the lead in cable there, and run a seperate cable up, so that way the length issue doesn’t involve running a new cable in from the street, or adding join after join.

Getting to it means crawling under the house so that you can remove it, and then extend it, simply because working on it inside is not easy with the length available, and you’d want to concentrate on not having to do the job again either.

But, that’s only half the issue, the socket, has what can be described as blue residue on the positive terminal, and it’s all dried in, which couldn’t really be helping things in the field of line stability or increased sync speed.

Anyway, what I’ve decided to do is remove the inline filter from being the modems connection point, and instead, got a double adapter for the socket, plugged the modem into one port, and ran a standard cable up to the filter, and then the phone to the filter.

That should hopefully stabilise the line a bit more, currently, we are seeing dropouts around once every 24 hours. It syncs back up again, and is tolerable to some degree, but I’d also like to have the service UP, because the drop outs sometimes interupt us, which sucks.

I’d be curious what it’d cost to get that socket fixed properly, I think it’s Telstra’s network boundary point for the house, considering it is the first socket (and the black lead in cable would confirm that for me at least).

So, I assume the socket would be Telstra’s responsibility to replace, when you consider the visible blue that is on the socket to some degree.

I’m worried something will hit it, or the cord will get pulled on hard enough that the wires from the lead in cable will break (copper can only really be bent back and forth so much!), and the black cable will drop below the house, meaning someone (ie. not me), will need to go fish it out, push it back up, and try and terminate it properly.

It’s likely a Telstra issue, considering it is Telstra’s boundary point. They get paid line rental to maintain it, so I guess we’ll wait and see just how much maintenance Telstra really do for that line rental they insist is required to maintain telephone lines.

As for stability, well compared to the DSL-504T, the Billion 5200 is miles ahead, and the speeds are also showing themselves to be faster.

The socket isn’t weak or anything, it’s just loose on the floor and that black cable concerns me it might fall down, meaning someone will have to go fish it back, and I don’t like crawling under houses. It’s not likely, I’ve got plenty of (but not excessive) slack on the cables that do connect to the socket.

Enjoy!

Looking at a $20 note recently, the question came at hand, what colour is it?

A few different responses were given.

1: Red
2: Orange
3: Pink

Obviously, Pink is wrong, we knew that much, but as to it being Orange or Red, I was pretty sure a $20 bill is orange.

My partner didn’t seem to agree with me, backing red all the way (I’m sure she’d have put $20 on it ;)).

So, it came to be a task for Google, and what an interesting information can be found by simply looking at google for a $20 note.

I wanted to find the colour, but ended up at the RBA (Reserve Bank) site, and it didn’t tell us anything at all about the colour of the note (though it did feature an image of it).

I was considering getting the printer up and running and printing a few copies of it and see what colours the printer chose to use to determine the colour of the note, but then considered that it’d only be a short step after there to cutting them out and turning them into official currency, so decided against that.

Then, my partner came across a wikipedia article, and sure enough, as $20 would have it, she was right, the note is actually a distinct red (according to wikipedia, we all know how they aren’t colourblind right?).

I always assumed they were orange, they simply have a more orange look to them to me, then red. Sure, it’s not the yellow kind of orange, but, an orange.

In other, unrelated, and completely different news, I was looking at someones ADSL connection today, and it didn’t seem to want to sync up stable. It would have the attempts at syncing, but just wouldn’t qualify those with a stable setup.

I concluded it must have been the long cable they were running, but, that obviously is wrong. So, the next step was to isolate what else could be causing it, so finding another socket, same thing.

What didn’t seem to make sense though is no matter where it was tried, it’d have the same behaviour.

This isn’t completely sorted yet, but it seems like the previous owner of the property has had broadband before, and has had a central splitter installed, and that’s part of the reason for this dodgy behaviour.

The problem is, the central splitter seems to have cables cut from it and so forth, which suggests that there is some damage done to his line.

That doesn’t sound too promising, but hopefully won’t be too bad to get fixed up.

But, on the trip back home, it literally poured down in buckets.

Good news seems to be happening this week however, with a few things finishing up, a long running dispute seems to be nearing an end and getting resolved, which is good.

And, a debt that was owed over a long time, seems to be making progress and is actually progressing to getting settled (despite being done in not so friendly way – no, I don’t have mafia links).

It’s always good to see progress on some issues that are long running and so complicated, yet so simple to sort out, but when they do get sorted, they are generally fixed up.

Enjoy!

I understand Conroy doesn’t exactly want to be the target of a lawsuit, even if it is vexatious, and he has already committed to sharing information about the OPEL decision with Telstra.

So, what I am wondering is, what about commercial in confidence information?

It would be a severe breach of many privacy laws to release information that was shared, which is commercial in confidence, so I assume OPEL must be given the oppourtunity here to ensure no such information is released to Telstra (or anyone).

I think the best Telstra should get in regards to the decision making process, is all the information that is relevant as to why Telstra’s proposal was not chosen.

That’s really all that matters to them as a whole anyway. Everything else is none of their business, and so, should not be exposed to prying eyes.

Proposed coverage information, and where services will be offered would be great public information however, and so, if OPEL was willing, I’d like to see this information shared among the masses.

I’d also like to see more about proposed services, and how they will plan to work, obviously the spectrum change will mean that OPEL should have revised technology (and larger coverage areas).

I would be keen to see more about typical results as well from testing, to determine the speeds possible at all lengths of the network in a typical environment.

But, all my interest in that information is quickly put aside in ensuring that there should be no release of information that might give Telstra an advantage to destroy the purpose of the program, which is funding more competition in regional and rural areas.

So, hopefully, we can still count on vital information being protected, or even better, Telstra being told to sod off and mind their own business (it is indeed no concern of Telstra’s anyway).

Oh, unless Telstra are threatened by the presence of OPEL? Will they actually admit that they have been pickpocketing regional consumers for years? Doubt it.

Enjoy!

CTP is a critical requirement when registering a vehicle, there’s no option that states you choose to wear all costs for driving an uninsured vehicle, and so forth, you are required to have it to register the vehicle.

However, something that amazes me, yet annoys me a lot is the clear differences in CTP costs between Qld and NSW.

In Qld, CTP costs $272 regardless of age, race, sex, religion, or even location.

In NSW, CTP costs vary wildly from $490 to $610 or more for those under 25 years of age.

I ran a few queries on a few sites for CTP Greenslips, and found, if you are 30 or so, the cost of a greenslip falls drastically, compared to that of a younger than 25 year old.

We paid $508 for an AAMI Greenslip, left with no real alternative to escape the $500 ageism hike.

Now, they might say statistics is the reason for it being so high, but this isn’t too believable in my eyes.

Is the statistics of high young driver crashes only high in NSW? Because Qld’s CTP is cheaper for everyone ($272 across the board).

NSW, Greenslips cost around $330 for a 30 odd year old, and $508 for me, a younger than 25 year old.

Why does QLD have them for $272, and here, the cheapest is $330? Why does Qld lack high statistics?

There are more drivers on the roads in NSW, sure, and yet, despite the higher levels of payment, for roads through a state that could possible find itself fitting inside Qld’s land area, we suffer from roads complete with potholes, rough surfaces, and poor planning.

How is that so? Why is it cheaper in Qld, when Qld have a fair heap of young drivers and older drivers?

Shouldn’t we adopt similar to Qld’s model for CTP? And just one flat rate across the board? Why the need to penalise young safe drivers?

I couldn’t possibly count the number of drivers I see, who are over 25, that DELIBERATELY break the speed limit.

It’s 50, they are all doing 60. They are tailgating, they are cutting into and out of lanes at a roundabout, they are talking on the cell phones, they are running red lights, they are speeding. They may not be included entirely in the group doing hoon behaviour, but sure enough, there are a heap of them doing illegal and unsafe activities on our roads, and in all seriousness, probably cause more accidents then those in the young driver category.

We don’t see any return or discount for driving safely, the greenslip charge is the same, and it expires after a year, even if you don’t have a single claim, and they aren’t rushing out to compete to give you a better deal for doing the right thing, they’d rather penalise everyone for a few people doing the wrong thing.

I do my best to be a safe driver on the road, and have yet to come too close to having any form of serious accident, I do my best to make sure I avoid any possible accident by taking safe moves, and watching what every other idiot is doing (no seriously, drive on the road believing everyone out there is an idiot and capable of doing something stupid, you’ll get a different perception), and in doing that, I spot most of the troublesome situations before they occur and avoid them in any way possible.

But, I still don’t get any discount because of my safe driving, I pay the same as all the idiots out there, all the drivers doing stupid, insane activities, like I think I can count 5 or more drivers who have changed lanes without indicating, and cut the driver behind them short placing them into a tailgating move (so they had to slow down to avoid collission).

And I do believe I could count 50 or more drivers who do definitely go over 50 in a 50 zone, and even over 20 in a 10 shared zone.

Do they get penalized, or is it a simple ‘stuff it- the entire age group, or the entire state can pay’?

Is that fair, or should it become more user pays, as the rest of products are these days? I think user pays works best. You drive in an unsafe manner, and it’s reported, up goes your premium.

A device installed in the car detects how fast you are travelling and what roads, each time you break the speed limit by 5k (the ad featuring cars crashing into a truck is enough to demonstrate this), your premium rises and is required to be paid.

Each demerit point earns you an extra rise in your fees.

If you have been driving for a low period of time, or a long period of time, and you haven’t done any driving offences, and haven’t earnt any points towards the greenslip to cause it to rise, then, you pay the base rate.

That way it is more user pays, and less ageism pays.

Why on earth am I penalised because other people who unfortunately share the same age bracket as me are too stupid to drive in a safe manner? Shouldn’t that be the RTAs problem for giving the tards licenses in the first place?

Or do I send the RTA the difference in the bill between my Greenslip, and that of an equivilent safe driver?

It doesn’t seem fair at all to me. It’s very much robbery of an age group, and I am not so certain the figures are audited well enough. How is it possible in Qld to have a CTP policy at $272, and in NSW, $500 is the average for drivers under 25?

It really, really doesn’t seem to be on the mark at all, someone has made a clear stuff up there.

Enjoy!

We recently had an ADSL2+ service connected, and since it has been connected, we’ve had issues with it.

The original issue was we weren’t able to authenticate with Exetel after being cutover, so they were contacted, to contact Optus about the issue.

We were syncing at a great speed though, 10Mbit down, and 1Mbit up. Fantastic speed, we just couldn’t authenticate (get an IP).

So, after chatting with Exetel, who in turn contacted Optus, they were told the service was working correctly.

This unfortunately wasn’t the case, as there was still no authentication happening.

Later on that day, the service came up and running, but it was at seemingly ADSL1 speeds, the 10Mbit in, 1Mbit out speeds were gone, and instead, we had speeds in the 8Mbit range, and upload capped out at around 0.8Mbit.

I figure, perhaps they fixed it by placing us on an ADSL1 profile, but me knowing a fair bit about DSL and how it works, asked for ADSL2+ to be reapplied to our connection now that the authentication issue was fixed.

I’m told that it is indeed in ADSL2+ mode, but I find this hard to believe.

How on earth did we drop line sync from 10Mbit to 7.6 – 8Mbit in one day? It doesn’t seem right. No equipment changes here, it all crashed down when they fixed the PPP issue, so it’s more than likely something they’ve done to the port.

This raises a question for me though, is it that just all ISPs are somehow attracted to create problems when they deal with us?

We had iiNet, and that was a nightmare. Phone service issues from barred calling, 3 week connection timeframe for a TW DSL service and phone service, account issues, the list goes on. It was a non stop problem (I don’t exaggerate, we had issues every month with them).

Then, when we moved, we determined we would immediately drop iiNet for the crap it was, and move to Netspace.

Netspace started fantastically, but, as I have posted here before, the move we did last year with them was nothing short of a disaster and showed Netspace to be utterly incompetent, and far from worthwhile. In fact, they had unfair contract terms to top that off, if you move, you have to have another 6 month contract extension. They also had billing issues, failing to debit an account at the designated time, they fail to tell you about it, and instead just go about taking it a month later.

So, we dumped Netspace, they were a headache of their own, long wait times, they went from GREAT to POOR.

Then, late last year, we went with Exetel, one thing we realised was there was no need for support when it came to the ISP. They employ monkeys anyway, and we don’t need those to help.

Plus, Exetel were the better value 8Mbit provider, so we decided to take the speed increase as it would benefit our VoIP quality, well worth it.

Then, a few weeks back, I decided we’d get ADSL2+, and since we were cutover, it’s been a little bit problematic, nothing too drastic, though we were offline for around half the day they did cut us over due to an issue with PPP authentication, it was solved sometime later, and since then, it’s simply been trying to explain how our line sync dropped from 10Mbit to 8Mbit, when there has been no change in equipment.

It’s just a little disappointing knowing our line is capable of the faster speed, yet, it’s not being delivered. It’s not as bad as TW DSL ports, which are artificially limited to ADSL1, 8Mbit, and 0.3Mbit out, so it’s certainly a lot better than that rubbish, but, a tad disappointing that they don’t seem to recognise we have lost a large degree of sync speed with no change, which suggests perhaps Optus hardcoded the port to ADSL1 mode (they could have?).

I’ll keep at them until they get it sorted, they hopefully will. Exetel are a great mob, and aside from the poor website (I mean it looks really poor, compare it to Internode or iiNet and you’ll get what I mean), they do a great job at providing reliable IP connectivity without much fuss.

Hopefully they can live up to that title further on and fix this issue with minimum fuss.

I can’t believe our track record with ISPs and problems, we do little to initiate them, we simply get the ISP to enhance our service in someway, and watch them screw it up. We’ve had others change, such as another person we know who also recently got ADSL2+. It was a breeze for them, coming from one ISP to ADSL2+. Went over there, changed user and pass details, and viola, set.

The same didn’t happen for us, as can be seen by the problems.

I’m relieved the issue with PPP authentication was solved same day, that was good, but the other issue, I just don’t see how they can explain that adequately in the timespace. Maybe if we stick at it, they’ll get better.

Enjoy!

A few months or so ago, I mentioned that I planned on setting up a web hosting server for select websites only.

Well, that hasn’t really progressed, and if anything, it’s actually gone backwards.

Just tonight however, I was testing out the features of a control panel I started with, and one of those features was a report on Bandwidth Usage.

I figure I’ll be able to use this to determine if anything is really pulling down the bandwidth or if they are mostly idle.

I test this out, and determine that it simply doesn’t want to show me the bandwidth calculations! I’ve tried upgrading the panel, I’ve tried adding more calculations, and it just doesn’t want to report on bandwidth consumption.

Luckily, I run another tool that’ll show me bandwidth usage as a whole, but it won’t break it down by domain, which is a pain.

I did a search all through the forum they have for users, and many have had similar issues, and they’ve either done what I have done, and that solved it, or, they’ve done what I’ve done, it hasn’t solved it, and they haven’t had any support beyond that.

I’ve gone and updated to the absolute latest, and you guessed it, still no calculations on bandwidth usage.

I remain unsure what the cause of it is, and there is little out there to explain what the issue is, aside from the conclusion: It’s a good thing the software I am running is the free version.

Bandwidth calculation is a pretty core part of a control panel when it comes to web hosting, for it to be broken seemingly defies the point in running it as part of a control panel (espiecially in Australia where bandwidth prices are ridiculous).

Enjoy!

PIPE Networks announced today that Project Runway has been cleared to take off. This will see PIPE Networks spend $200 million investing in international capacity to help break a ‘gang-of-four’ competition bottle neck.

PIPE plans to hit the ground running once the cable is deployed in mid to late 2009, slashing prices on international connectivity by as much as 50%.

That’s an incredible point to enter the market, one would have thought they’d drop down by about 25%, and then come down if they need to (ie. let the others come down first).

It just seems like they’d be giving up extra money by not getting involved in encouraging a price fight.

Sure, they might come down by 50% in the end, but profit terms, you’d probably want to wait and see what you can milk it for?

PIPE do have their heads screwed on though, requiring no fund raising for the $200 million deployment cost, simply instead funding it from financing and current cash flows.

That type of situation means they’ll be debt free within 6 months of the cable getting deployed, and seeing very positive returns within years 3 – 5 of what generally is a 15-30 year plus deployment, so the profits made off a cable are great!

The effects this has on consumer broadband services won’t be fully known, but we can estimate that with a 50% drop in cost, comes a 15%+ increase in data usage by some ISPs, and others might simply maintain same quotas and chop prices by the equivilent.

iiNet were singing PIPE praises too, stating that the domestic transit is fine, the international transit comprises a large amount of the bill, and by halving that iiNet are theoretically positioning themselves to instead, spend the same, but GET more (and with more data becomes better plans).

It’ll be a while after deployment for the benefits to trickle down through to everyone, but if your ISP is in the top 10, no doubt they’ll be on the ball to get access to that PIPE data, either directly, or indirectly, for the savings they’ll realise, and the benefits it delivers.

PIPEs cable has been made possible with VSNL, PNG Telekom, iiNet, Internode and Primus, to name just part of a list.

I doubt they’ll all just run away from the existing providers, I think they will simply slash bandwidth levels with them, so that they can obtain better savings.

PIPE obviously have international benefits from deploying this cable too, with interest from PNG Telekom suggesting they see themselves benefitting from it.

PIPE also have a spur planned for the Gold Coast at some point in the future, perhaps that will link the Gold Coast to Sydney, and from the Gold Coast to Brisbane, creating an interstate link for interstate data. Just theory, but it could be happening. Brisbane could become a popular place for POPs to be deployed for international connectivity and redundancy from Sydney.

We might see some benefits sooner if any of them feel a threat of this cable, but its doubtful.

Back in line for 2009.

Enjoy!

Primus Telecom has been given an $8 million new year welcome from Telstra, courtesy of the ACCC for Telstra’s persistent over charging of competitors for access to LSS and ULL based services.

In 12 months from July 2007, Telstra would have lost a combined total of $39,000,000 in revenue, as a result of their overcharging.

The LSS / ULL prices being dropped is doing Telstra no favours at all, but, the regulations imposed are doing an average job at creating competition in the industry.

Telstra in July 2007 lost $16,000,000 back to iiNet in a declaration. iiNet also saved $1,000,000 a month as a result of the more realistic rate for access.

Just off the one company alone, Telstra is down $28,000,000. That’s a lot of money to be blowing down the drain as a result of a failure to act on Telstra’s part (Telstra could have rolled out FTTN years ago).

There are a few other companies also in the queue for declarations, dispute resolution and refunds, being Optus, ZYZed, PowerTel, Request, AAPT, Macquarie, Nextep, Adam, TPG, Internode, and SPT, all for ULL decisions.

So, it would seem Telstra’s bank balance might only be partly puffed for the moment, and get a big drop after all these are sorted out and a lot of refunds are given.

And, the end result will still be the same. Telstra, kicking and screaming, whinging and whining over how they are being hard done by, when a competitor pays them $17 for a line they retail for $19 anyway.

When it comes to FTTN, Telstra should have acted years ago.  Now it’s too late, they have to argue it with the ALP, G9, themselves, and anyone else who wants to join the party.

That said, both Telstra and G9 aren’t interested in FTTN for the speeds it will provide, or the cost reductions that come with a fibre network deployment.

Both sides are planning FTTN as damage control. Telstra doesn’t want to lose a lot of bucks to ADSL2+ ISPs, and G9 don’t want those ADSL2+ DSLAMs stranded and end up paying Telstra high rates for access to artificially limited services.

So, they are both using FTTN as a form of damage control, and it’s not the right environment to deploy such a network. Deploy it when you realise you want to offer consumers faster access, better services, and enjoy a lower cost network.

That’s not the case right now, it’s all about trying to regain control, or trying to get control of the infrastructure.

Do you spend $50,000 on a car that someone else was planning on buying, simply because you don’t want them buying the $50,000 car and would rather they bought the $60,000 car?

Yeh, bad analogy, but you should get the idea, it’s all about damage control, controlling how much they’ll lose, or how many customers they stand to lose in the face of a new monopoly.

We don’t need a new monopoly, we need to get the first companies regulated tightly first.

Enjoy!

PIPE Networks is in a trading halt right now, in what can be perceived as an announcement relating to the deployment of a new underwater pipe to Guam.

Viva La Competition is the only real message I can think of sending to Southern Cross Cables and Australia – Japan Cable, who currently maintain a duopoly on the network traffic out of Australia.

I can’t really blame them for that though, if the market will bare high prices, they are there to charge it. If you had a business, you’d also charge what the market would bare.

It doesn’t make it right for everyone else though, because they are all paying more than is needed for less of a product.

But, that’s not the fault of anyone but PIPE in this example, who have had all the time in the world to add that cable and didn’t do so (and anyone else who can lay a cable).

I guess, I’m saying I can see a reason for the high pricing, it’s not really due to greed, but more to it, lack of competition.

OPEL is the right idea, add more layers of network, you add another layer of competition, you add another layer of price competitiveness (ie. OPEL fight for Telstra dollars, PIPE fight for Southern Cross dollars).

It all seems like PIPE might have the go ahead to pour $200 million into the ocean in the form of a 1.1Tbps Fibre Optic cable, to provide international access to anyone prepared to pay a lower price then Southern Cross.

So, that would technically be a great percentage of the industry, no doubt.

I believe they might just jumble the traffic.

So, Internode might buy up 100Mbps on that cable, and use it for all Asia related traffic.
iiNet on the other hand might buy 400Mbps on that cable, and just keep 200Mbps on the Southern Cross Cable, for redundancy.

Exetel might on the other hand, use all their cards as bargaining chips and dump all the bandwidth on the cheapest supplier and keep a second as a failover.

So, what happens when iiNet, Internode, and Exetel make their changes? Southern Cross is losing income. So, they’ll want that back. How though?

Well, there’s only one way you can do better in that scenario, drop price and tempt the customers back onto your service, and encourage them to spend more with you.

We’ll of course ignore sabotage, because its both illegal and unethical, but the only other way they’d get customers back.

What does all this fighting mean for the consumer?

Well, with so many ISPs in the long run finding better prices, the consumer wins by lower prices due to lower service costs.

Enjoy!

The other day, my back started acting up, but not minorly, really badly.

I got home, and managed to put up with it, then went to sleep, the next morning, I woke up and seriously found it difficult to pull myself out of bed.

We made a doctors appointment, and in something that can only be described as a worlds first, they managed to nab one in just 20 minutes time – for a doctor that is normally booked for days in advance.

So, we went to the appointment, and the doctor asked what my job was, and whether I had undergone any strenuous activity.

I figure, well, I doubt the type of injury that is there, could possibly be related to typing around 40,000 keys on a keyboard a day, so there must be something else involved.

He couldn’t seem to figure it out, but prescribed Voltaren tablets. They work wonders!

Really does help relax and get rid of the inflammation from the back, and via what seems to be serves travelling through to my chest.

I guess I somehow have managed to injure my back in someway, possibly lifting an item at one point, and it just settled there til I moved in a position at one point and that triggered it.

It’ll be interesting to see what the X-Rays showed (taken today), and whether there is anything wrong, because I would have thought it to settle down by now.

It makes concentrating on things that much more difficult, because you are trying to focus and the pain kicks in, and you immediately try to find ways to relieve it.

It’s absolutely the worst kind of pain there is of that nature in my opinion. I’m sure there might be a few exceptions, but it really isn’t something you just ‘ignore’.

I could say that something more painful is some of the posters on Whirlpool trying to snipe down OPEL before it even starts on all sorts of ridiculous and invalid points.

Actually, one thing I find rather insane is the amount of people on the internet collectively who are not able to conduct themselves appropriately and construct and participate in a decent debate topic.

They resort to name calling, they resort to all sorts of stupid antics, and that really just demonstrates the poor education that some of these complete idiots have. They really need to be spending the time they are pointlessly trying to push an invalid point, with perhaps a follow up education, so they don’t look as dumb and stupid as they are. Oh well, it’s always a good laugh when you see idiots in groups try and attack someone for having a valid point. It’s actually funny.

But, that’s the wonders of the internet, everyone has their own opinion, everyone has their own points, and when bought to a discussion forum, everyone tends to discuss and follow up on such opinions, with exception, the stupid uneducated lot. They resort to name calling.

Enjoy!

This is a little expected, but raises many questions.

Austar has sold its spectrum to OPEL for $65 million dollars. Bargain!

The questions for me it raises are:
1. OPEL is obviously changing from the 5Ghz spectrum to the 2.3 and 2.5Ghz spectrum. The maps previously released on the broadband now website must now be out of date and the range must therefore be longer. When will the community be updated with this news and coverage plans?

2. Seven bought up Unwired, and were aiming for the Austar spectrum in a move that looked as though they wanted to be a Video, Voice and Internet supplier. Without the spectrum in regional areas, are they planning on instead just targetting metro, or will they wholesale from OPEL?

3. OPEL have now got new plans for new equipment, will they be rolling out mobile WiMAX, or sticking with fixed but using the different spectrum?

4. Austar have also stated they will have wholesale agreements with Optus, are these incentive based agreements with Optus to cover for what could be described as a $50 million spectrum price shortfall, or were Austar really just ‘very nice’ in the price they accepted?

5. Will Austar be removing its WiMAX network in the areas it is rolled out as a trial?

The news seems a little out of touch with expectations. I assumed Austar would have got greedy, much like a domain squatter and made both sides bid til they got angry for the spectrum.

Seven would have, imaginably fought hard for it, the idea they SEEM to have (but is unconfirmed) is probably destined to provide a great deal of market capitalisation for them, and translatable profit.

OPEL on the other hand won’t be expecting wholesale profit at amazing levels like Seven’s retail products could be, but, OPEL will have their independant retailers, Optus and Elders, making the larger profits.

This simply leaves us to believe more so that there are interesting times ahead in a market that is at times settled, yet active, and angry, yet relieved.

In related news, Austar can be quoted as saying they expect to begin wholesaling at the end of 2008, which still raises questions over how the network will be ready. I can understand ADSL2+ could be ready though, which might be the target angle of the comments (wholesaling ADSL2+).

Enjoy! 

It’s amazing how many people will do stupid things on the road.

I was out tonight, up for a bit of ice cream, so we went to the shops, and as I went around- I don’t need to say this, do I, you guessed it, a roundabout, some idiot decides that slowing down and indicating intentions at roundabouts is a thing of the past.

According to this idiot, you simply drive straight through them, without regard for lane markings, other vehicles on, or approaching the roundabout, and heck, we won’t tell anyone what we are doing either.

I was approaching the roundabout, was fully aware another vehicle was around 3 seconds behind me. Nice and safe, and so was the driver behind me.

As I slowed to enter the roundabout, I check to see all is clear, I see nothing hazardous or potentially hazardous within view, so I continue and complete an entrance and right turn at the roundabout, indicating my intentions as I was coming off also.

As I was coming off, I saw an idiot coming in a bit fast. Didn’t slow down at all, and the other driver behind me entered the roundabout after I did.

You guessed it, a near collision, between the two of them. Who was at fault? Well, a roundabout is a circular raised concrete (normally) structure in the centre of the road. You have 4 triangular signs on each approach side of the roundabout. The purpose? To slow vehicles down, and allow the efficient move of traffic through an intersection without traffic lights.

So, the roundabout seems fine, it does it’s job.

The drivers here on the other hand, the car behind me, after I entered, would have had to stop, check for traffic, and then enter.

The driver who came screaming through the roundabout, didn’t slow down, check, and enter.

To me (after I had left the roundabout), all I heard was a horn going off, and someone yelling out “Sorry”.
It looked as though it was a very close incident, but a near miss.

The idiot going through, without slowing down, anticipating other vehicles being there, is in my opinion, at fault. Had I not have been as quick around it, it could have been my arse he hit.

That said, as I came around the roundabout, I saw him, anticipated (as in predicted, felt, knew) he was not going to slow, and it’d be a close call or accident behind me. I saw him and immediately knew he was not going to stop.

Then, to make things different, another idiot, on the way back, driving a four wheel drive, approached a roundabout, as I was preparing to enter (1st selected, friction point found), and he just came straight through.

Some people just don’t deserve a licence, I’m telling you! They disobey Give Way signs at each roundabout. Then, you get others who think a 10k zone is a 40k zone and insist on going faster. And, cap it off with all the other fools who don’t indicate coming off a roundabout, like you are required to!

Add on mobile phone usage (we saw a police officer driving with a phone next to his ear), and SMS while driving, among the other things, and I’m amazed there isn’t dedicated forces out there tackling these, and getting the fines in to fix the stupid roads that are so screwed up in several different ways.

That, also brings me to my next point. Where is the near thousand dollars in rego going?

It costs me near $800 a year to put the car on the road, yet, the surface I must drive on is equivilent to a 4WD off road track!

What does my $800 get me? It looks to me like a bit of tar here and there, and the rest goes to pay for the drunk drivers pole replacements, speeding wankers, and well, the idiots above who have no concept of Give Way.

I think I’d rather keep my $800, but then, I can’t use my car on the road, because they force you to pay exhorbitant prices.

It’s $500 for a green slip for me, yet, I’m not the cause of accidents, as can be seen from the above, the stupid tourists are. The pushy arseholes of drivers who are in the 40 year plus bracket are.

The habitual speeders who insist 50 means 65 are. Yet, the $800 doesn’t go to giving them fines and getting their dollars to fix the roads. No. Not at all. They’d all revolt and vote the state government out, wouldn’t they!

It’s amazing the double standards approached here.

Then, further, in yet another roundabout, I had 4 people walking on the roundabout, where I’d have to actually run them over to get past, had I had been that lunatic who didn’t seem to SLOW down at the roundabout.

Mind you, none of them where P platers. But, if they came rushing around that corner, they’d have flattened at least 3 of them. And whose dollars pay for it? Not the $300 they pay, no, the leftover profits from the 20 – 25 year old age group picks up the tab, I’m sure.

Rate The Plate.com.au has the right idea if you ask me. Get peers to rate other road users, and get sufficient data to report on the drivers, such as age groups of those involved in accidents, who was at fault, and so forth.

Insurance itself really should be based on driver ability, if a driver doesn’t have any incidents at all, they should hit the mainstream rate across the board for all drivers. If a driver slips up, peer reporting works. Sure, they don’t give them too much weight, but if you follow some of the plates listed on Rate the plate, you get a good picture of just what happens, when an idiot hits the roads. They’ll get rated by more than one person.

An insurance company can then use this driver assessing data to determine the abilities of a driver, whether they make many driving errors, whether they cause many incidents, and base an insurance rate off that.

User pays system. Insurance goes up if you are demonstrated (at any age group) to be a bad driver, goes down if you can demonstrate good driving, at any age group.

Demerit points might also be considered here too, so that way they get a real good idea.

I just don’t see how paying $500 for a green slip, is anywhere near realistic, for someone who maintains a clean driving history. If people want to be idiots, bill them directly for it. We all shouldn’t have to suffer.

That said though, our road toll has improved over the christmas period, that says enough to me to say that the rates of insurance should improve within those margins as well. Much like petrol I suppose, it climbs when the bowsers are low, drops when they gotta move the juice. If they get heaps of accidents reported a year, raise the prices, if it drops the mainstream rate drops, and if you are accident prone, you get a higher rate.

There’s only a few years left for me to suffer these intolerably high green slip prices, and then they’ll go down enough to be called reasonable.

I still do question however, where on earth our local registration dollars are going, I’d take some pictures of some pretty bad road surface, except, I can’t take photos driving.

If you live on the central coast, you’ll know what I am talking about. It’s pitiful.

Enjoy!

A new year is a common time for “new”. A new resolution. A new goal. A new year to attempt to acheive something in.

Year in, year out, I think you’d be crazy to set goals and not stick to them.

I think those who have real success from goals from a new years resolution essentially are goal orientated people, and have the motivation to stick to them and, even if it weren’t a new year, could have likely did the same goal anyway.

I was listening to Sea FM today, and it was revealed in a news release that Quitline expected to receive a sharp peak in smokers attempting to quit as part of new years resolutions.

I would love to see what sort of statistics follow on from that however, as in, whether there is growth in smoking and those who commit don’t quit, or a decline and those who do quit actually quit, and smoking uptake is dropping.

I know I quit smoking some time ago. It took me just 2 weeks of tolerating the urges to reach for a cigarette. And I did indeed pull away from it.

I actually started with the Zyban tablets, and I’ll tell you now, they’ll knock you around. They’ll turn your day upside down. You’ll go from enjoying a cigarette every so often, to the simple thought of being near a cigarette causing you to vomit, not just vomit either, but vomit black.

I endured it, thinking I would improve, but none the less, days after, the situation wasn’t improving, it was a very, very bad drug. That said, it still didn’t make smoking justified.

So, I moved on to patches a while after, when my partner committed to undertaking her own activity, and just 2 weeks on the smoking patches (I didn’t really have them on full time either), got me to quit.

My motivation wasn’t a new year, it wasn’t really anything else except the fact that I wanted to be able to have more time with my little one, and that I gained from. I wanted to be free from its stranglehold, I wanted the freedom from cigarettes provoking my thoughts in the morning, to being the last I reach for at night.

That said, new years resolutions, do they work for many people? I wonder if there is actually any real statistics on it? I’d ask the ABS, but I doubt their staticians specialise in New Year promises being broken.

I can’t think of any real resolutions for myself, but that said, I could use with some goals to get things moving. I would always love to be more free for my little one, I think he deserves the time with me.

That said, I also would love to finish up more projects this year, and have many of them ready to be self sufficient, requiring low maintenance from me, again, freeing my time up.

I do have one carefully placed goal I think for this year, and that is to finish my Diploma of IT, and in doing that, be prepared to choosing a path for 2009 and beyond.

Ideally, I should see a nice point in the operations for 2008, in a sense that the goal for 2009 is already decided before we come to it. Otherwise, it’ll be either choosing to grow a business from home, or back to work and getting the savings up, so when real estate prices crash, we can get building.

That said, nothing in the above is a real new years resolution to me, because they all don’t share a goal path, and none actually have milestone goals with exception of the Diploma.

I already know and plan to acheive the Diploma of IT this year, and assuming all goes well, come January 2009, I should well and truly be expecting it to arrive.

What do I do after there isn’t clear, and probably won’t be clear until mid / near end of the year.

I also do what is known as Damage Control, so if things don’t work out, I’ll do up 3 different resumes focusing on any number of differing skillsets and target a job in the local area, at least in doing that I can avoid transit to Sydney.

I’d love to see what others are doing as “New Years Resolutions”, not for anything related to me, but more to it, related to discovering what people aim for now a days. What do people aim for as a goal? To be debt free? To buy a house? To be a better person?. I must dig some of those out using Google. Should be interesting.

Oh, and the old WordPress blog here has had an update, so hopefully this doesn’t look too strange. 

Enjoy!

We haven’t got the bill yet, but being the curious person I am, I must know the full results of all that we have done in the realm of saving power.

So, I started a few days ago, reading the meter to the house.

The readings were rather surprising.

Previously (months ago) I measured and we were sucking around 19kWH a day minimum, and 20/21kWH a day as a maximum (probably washing day).

I did a meter reading one day, then the next day, I came out with a result of 17kWH (taken same time each day).

Then I read the day after, and got a result of 15kWH. Pretty good.

Then I read again today, two days after, and get a result of 17.5kWH a day.

We had the first reading at 147. The day after, 164. The next day read in at 179. Then two days later, we read it at 214.

Maybe the oven was used at some point there, but in the last two days, we averaged 17.5kWH a day, over the entire period, of 4 days, we average 16.75.

The bill has us at 17kWH. So that gives us preliminary results, that giving the server and my machine a rest over the night when its not being used, is saving us a bit.

That’s heaps better than the 21kWH it was hanging roughly around.

Add on our Hot Water in off peak, and you get a realisation of around 26kWH a day.

Under our new conservative measure, we should see a 90 day average of 22kWH a day, which wipes approximately $46 off a 90 day bill.

And it took bugger all time to set that up either. Just simply take advantage of Standby timers on my machine (better than rebooting), and the server shuts itself down and starts itself up using Windows Schedular and a BIOS timer.

I think a new fridge would save us about an additional 2 kWH a day as well (we’d go with one that isn’t frost free, etc, etc, we want food COLD!).

Hopefully the bill reflects my expected results (not this one so much so as the next one, because this isn’t a full period of change (though it has been going for some time)).

Enjoy!

Here’s one sure way of knowing it is the jolly (or is it silly) season.

The idiots on the road increase EXPONENTIALLY!

Today, I did a few Ks, we went to the local shopping centre, and collected a few items.

On the way there:
1. The car in front was going slow as. Almost like they were trying to find something.
-Yes, they might have. The roundabout 10Ks down the road.

2. Some idjit talking on their phone was cutting into and out of the wrong side of the road. I was so waiting to slow down for the almost certain accident. He just got lucky!

3. On the way out to go fetch some lunch from Hungry Jacks, we came across and went past a few trucks. Successfully overtaken. I try to avoid it, but then, I was thinking, there’s gotta be a time to take on overtaking a truck. And I did. It worked.

That said, ever gone through a roundabout and not kept to the left or right of the centre line (ie, driven straight over it)?
That’s stupid. If I’m in your blind spot, you might expect your fuel tank to get some damage. It’s stupid. Slow down and take the fkn thing properly.

4. On the way back, the speed limit on the stretch of road is 70. The fool in front was doing 45 – 55. Then again, I’m not sure if the car they were driving was capable of much faster, so I overtook it, and all was smooth, til we got to a 60K zone and saw 2 others doing at least 70 still.

Should probably tell them that 5K makes all the difference between a crushed headlight and a crushed windscreen.
Maybe they’ll find out the hard way.

5. Another sure fire tip it is holiday time. The amount of idiots driving around with HIGH beam on, in well lit streets.

It’s insane.

So, I’ve got a solution to it.

Some halogen globes, and if they try to blind me, they’ll get a good X ray on the way past. Blind them, they might see my point.

Stupid, stupid, stupid people.

Then, on 2 seperate occassions on the way home…

I live near a roundabout, and the road is lane marked, so I must go around the roundabout, then come back in to park.

I proceed to the roundabout, right indicator on.
I proceed through the roundabout after checking it is clear.
I get HALF way around it, still indicating right, and the moron on the other side decides he’ll cut me off and take his left turn there.
Breaking the give way rule (I’m on the FKN roundabout).

Then, tonight, after a visit to a relative, and going back to Woolworths to collect a few other non essential items, we came back, and again, going around the SAME roundabout, with the RIGHT indicator STILL on, I get three quarters around, and the dick on the left ENTERS.

I’m not finished exiting the roundabout, and if I wasn’t on the ball, you’d have some missing doors.

Clearly people can’t wait a fkn second, they’d much rather find their own bodies mangled to some degree.

Idiots. Stupid, stupid people. Smack them around the head a bit, surely.

How on earth do these people survive on the road, doing such stupid things?

I’m LEAVING a roundabout, when I indicate left, signalling my intention to TURN off.

Then again, if I were a police officer, I’d have a field day issuing fines for both, failure to give way on a roundabout, and failure to indicate.

The state government would love me.
But then, a lot of motorists would hate the state government.

Stupid people. Clearly, many of them do not wish to “arrive alive”.

I go out and always intend to arrive alive, and generally drive in such a manner to ensure I can arrive alive.

“Wouldn’t you rather arrive alive?”

Enjoy!