The aim for tonight is simply to get to sleep before 5:30 AM ;) heh

The wireless goes up today. It's just in time for a nice test too - there's a thunderstorm predicted for Sunday afternoon... let's hope it doesn't blow away, heh :) I might consider doing a link test during the rain to see what loss there is... but first things first, we have to get it up and running.

A few hold-ups with that domain transfer I was doing on Thursday... because no one assigned the domain a Registrar at the start of the year (when auDA took over .org.au's) it has to be assigned one before any redelegation can occur. That means a few more days of waiting before anything happens ("damn Spiderweb").

For now, bed ;)

The plastering in the office is finished! It's only taken... months. Heh. The painting starts today, though it won't be finished for Friday, obviously. That's fine though. Early next week, the electrical and fit-out, then probably the carpet last. The antenna will be up before the week's over, too.



I've set up a client in WebCentral's Partner Manager now and figured out how the process works and how it's streamlined. Today I also chased up some domain keys and that kind of fun stuff - it can be a hassle to move a domain name when no one remembers the password and the email address is obsolete. The process involves convincing the registrar (now auDA, since the .au space shake-up) to change the email address contact of the domain (which requires all kinds of proof of identification). Once that's been done, you can then request the password be sent to the contact email address. Once you have the key, you can then get another registrar or reseller to move it to a new location.

WebCentral's phone support is the best. If you are placed in a queue (a rare event), you're actually told where you are in the queue, something that most companies would not dare tell you (usually because you'd be "currently in 187th position"). WebCentral's queue makes you actually get excited about being in the queue. It tells you each time you progress in the queue... it's like a personal New Year's Eve countdown party! "You are second in the queue!", "You are now first in the queue!" - It's great! What's more, it's a 24/7/365 freecall number too.

Companies like WebCentral have the right attitude to customer service: nothing is too much trouble and the client is the most important thing in the world.

It's also important to understand that one person providing bad customer service brings down the image of the entire company. I'll give the local Subway as an example. The majority of the people working there are great, they make you feel as though you're important and they really are happy that you're buying food from them. They really believe the Subway "eat fresh" motto. However, there is one guy that works there that makes you feel as though you're inconveniencing him by making an order. A drowsy, dull-faced and grumpy man that gets annoyed at you if you turn up wanting a sub 10 minutes before the closing time that's laser-cut-stickered on the front glass. A man that thinks that he decides on behalf of the customers when they should and shouldn't be hungry. A man that's going to find himself with no job if he doesn't change his attitude... >:)

And now, since I can see the beginnings of the sunrise, it's time I got out of here.

The rain's almost gone. It's a shame that we aren't getting more rain here... everywhere has been so dry... but it will let us finish some things such as the wireless antenna installations. Also, the plastering in the office is now finished and needs to be sanded - then the painting starts this week and if things work out, should be finished for Friday (though it's going to be pushing it) in time for the carpet to be laid. Once that's done, the finishing touches can be put on and things can be moved in. The wiring shouldn't take very much time, just an hour or so in there one night to terminate all of the ends and figure out what's going where.

I stopped in at the Black Dog Cafe the other night for a cappuccino. I know how lame and inner-city that sounds, but it was solely to unwind. I just sat there, in the very cold wind with the warm cup in my hands, staring up at the sky and stars and the trees on the break between the beach and the esplanade. In a way, it was nice to have no one that I know hanging around. It feels... like a release, to have no attachments and to blend into the crowd and be invisible for a while. Watching cars and people go past, listening to the waves and the wind, it's like it's happening as a movie and you're sitting back watching it. I think for my sanity, it'll be something I'll do more often.

It's time to start winding my body clock back too...

Night.

Again my body clock is out and I stayed up until to see the light of day.

It's going to be like that again tonight... a lot of work to do for tomorrow and not much time to do it in (but I work quite well under pressure, even if it is with vocal discontent - there's no one here to listen to me anyway heh).

It rained last night and has been raining all day. The air is cool and calm. I like it when there's a few days of constant rain littering everything as far as the eye can see.

Now, back to work I go, in the plate for today is interface design.

The wireless gear turned up today and also my new mouse.

The antennas are 20 dBi grid antennas which should have pretty low wind resistance and withstand the weather well. Also, I now have the pigtail connectors for the wireless cards - a kind of small adaptor cable to convert from the proprietary connector on the cards to a standard N-type connector for the LMR 400 low-loss 50 Ohm cable (which also arrived with the antennas, about 40 m of it all up).

We'll probably set it up Monday now. It was going to be today but the gear turned up late and we wouldn't have had time anyway.

The weekend is out too, because mum and dad are heading to Brisbane after lunch, until late Sunday. Because I've got work that has to be finished for Monday I'm going to be staying here. I'd like to go because it might be a while before we get the chance again, but I need to have this work finished and I don't feel I'd have the time to do it if I was away for a day in Brisbane.

Tonight it's a full house with some relatives staying over before heading off tomorrow on a holiday. Today was "one of those days". Some work will continue on the office tomorrow and the plastering will amazingly be finished (although I'll believe it when I see it)! This means that in the coming week we'll be able to internally paint the place, rig up the antenna and test the link, terminate all of the network cabling, sort out the phone cabling and get the Commander unit ready (phone lines coming in to the building were done yesterday), have the carpet laid and have the electrical fittings put on and tested (and thus the air conditioning as well). Then it's simply a matter of moving in. Life will gain some normality, although I'm sure it will be substantially different from what "normal" has been over the past year.

So that I make the most of the weekend, I should get in to bed and try to get to sleep :)

G'night.

It seems to be pretty common that people cook too much pasta and rice. In my opinion, they're the two most deceptive foods on earth. You think, even though you know how much pasta and rice expand, that whatever you're putting in "still doesn't look like enough". Then, when you cook it, you of course find out that it's more than enough.

Tonight, I finally cooked just the right amount! Because my body clock is essentially broken, I went to bed yesterday past 6 in the morning, and woke up at midday. So it also means I get hungry around 2 AM, LOL. Anyway, tonight's meal was pasta with some tasty stir-through pasta sauce and cheese. Unlike the last time, I managed to find a stir-through sauce I actually like, rather than one that will leave me smelling of garlic for two weeks.

Back to work I go...


Getting to sleep might be a wise idea, too.

Another one bites the dust.

*throws yet another microsoft explorer optical intellimouse across the room to the bin for a 3 point shot*

All net, my friends.

This time it forced me to restart my computer, because in the process of malfunctioning it also took out my USB Root Device. *groan*

Falling asleep to the sound of rain.

The meeting went well and the drive was fun :) It's nice to have a day "out of the office" ;)

It appears as though the site will be presented in four languages at this point, perhaps English, Japanese, Korean and Indonesian, though they're subject to change right now. The challenge will be type-setting the material into a character set that is as universal as possible. The current state of the web yields more alternatives than you can poke a stick at, but the 'new' Unicode UTF-8 may be safest.

*sips cup of tea*

The weather has taken an odd change, becoming cold again after warming quite a bit throughout last week. There's some rain not far from here *looks at radar* and if we're lucky there might be something to measure here. Every place I go lately looks and feels dry. Just looking at the fields and lakes by the highways while driving on Wednesday seems to show that even the coastal areas are dry. Never mind, we're moving into a more humid season...

And 'sis', if you keep whinging, it should be no wonder that I don't come and visit you :P More to the point, it was a very busy weekend :P



A fun and busy weekend :) We headed for Brisbane Saturday afternoon, stopping in on a few places along the way. After finally getting there I got the chance to meet Badz0r (heh) and give him much needed .hack//sign goodness. Bad has had me drooling over .hack//sign since a couple of weeks ago when he introduced me to the anime series. Normally it's not the style of anime that I like but the concept had me hook, line and sinker. Then there was some general cruising around the place and the next day I dropped in again to say hihihi to Splash, Bri and of course Charly, heh. It's good to see everyone again :D Then, alas, I had to leave and we headed back here, having to stop in on a few places that wasted a lot of time :P One in particular where I was left sitting around for over an hour bored out of my mind, but that's a story for another time.

Now I'm back here working away and organising things. Today was actually hot, but tonight is cool and breezy. I'm churning through work and make preparations for future jobs... it's all reasonably interesting, but I do need an early night so that on Wednesday I won't be tired while I'm out driving and meeting clients. It's not a good image to turn up and fall asleep while your client is talking to you, heh :)

Netspace have given their customers an added bonus with the addition of free usage between users within the same state. For example, you could transfer 1 GB to another user on Netspace that's in the same state as you and none of it will be counted towards your monthly quota. Now, all that's left to do is find more people I know that are on Netspace ;)

As I mentioned though, an early night is on the cards, so I'll take this opportunity to say goodnight and head off to bed :) L8r.

"a friendly smile and such... such a thing is what i need right now"

Cainer...!

"and i smile..."

Another busy week is over (leading in to another even busier weekend ;)

On the website front, I've been slowly adding back the old Garbage entries in to the new database-driven format. There's a lot of time involved, so it may be a few more days before the entire archive is online again.

I'll be heading to Brisbane tomorrow afternoon, until Sunday evening. It's going to be another single-day stop, because of the work still being carried out on the office here (which means we have to be here Saturday mornings).

There was a hint of rain today while I was out and about (picking up a subinahurry, actually ;) - it did me the favour of washing off some of the dirt that's all over my car. I really need to give it a clean, but every chance I get is filled with something more urgent to do. I'm going to make sure I have it clean before Wednesday though, when I'll be taking it on a nice, long drive.

I'm going to add an update later on tonight, but right now I'll keep adding back older entries :)

I don't remember mentioning this before, so if I have, please bear with me:

I few weeks ago I saw a small review of a great site, www.subinahurry.com. Since then, I've used this service a few times and it's been really good. It allows you to order Subway food online, specifying the exact sub/drink/etc that you want, a time you'd like to pick it up and the store to pick it up from. I was surprised when I saw that the local store was in on the whole deal and even more so when it worked ;) I also used it again tonight because I was realllly hungry!

It also lets you store 'favourite' subs that you've customised.

This means that I can combine chicken and bacon (talk about the best of both worlds! The best of white and red meats, who would have thought it possible?!) on a deli-style sub, along with all kinds of fresh stuff, then, it's ready nice and hot when I go to pick it up. What more could you ask for? It's usually really cheap too... I don't know if it's cheaper than walking in and buying one normally, but it seems cheaper. The order fee for using www.subinahurry.com is just 10 cents on top of whatever you've ordered. Pretty slick!

Mmm... all this talk about it is making me want another one, but they close at midnight :( heh

The days are feeling more like summer, but the nights are still cold. The change in weather is making me tired. Or it could be my lack of regular sleep ;)

Ahhh... about a week since the last update!

A lot has been happening but probably not things that anyone would be interested in (or things that should be said, for that matter).

Of the things that I can talk about: A lot of configuring computers, coding, database design, brain-storming, talking, evil plan creation (err... shh, don't tell anyone), strange weather, odd sleeping hours and late-night snacking! Heh...

This morning I had to wake up early to go and see a dentist for a regular checkup and teeth clean (and to check a few things that I'd been keeping track of). All went well, no problems (yey) and the next big dental step will be, unfortunately, to have my wisdom teeth removed. I don't know why they're called "wisdom" teeth... certainly no wisdom comes with them (but maybe I'm an isolated case).

Mid next week I'll be heading to the Sunshine Coast to meet with a client, but this weekend there's a possibility that we'll be heading to Brisbane for a brief hiatus from the things going on here (which would be nice). Chances are that something will come up and those plans will be shattered in to a few hundred small, splinter-like pieces, though ;)

Mostly related to work, I've been coding into reality some ideas I've come up with for administration systems. They're progressing in an interesting manner and I've come up with a lot of features I'd like to add. I'm also working with my dad and my oldest brother to create a fully web-based billing system for their practice. After hearing about the way they currently have to do each bill (and keep track of it), I decided that it was so inefficient that I'd have to do something. So many ideas and so little time to execute them! Someone donate me some additional caffeine ;)

I can feel my sleep-deprivation looming around me like a thick grey fog, so it's time to stumble away and get in bed!

Good night and I'll have more updates throughout the week :)