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I tried to post this on the 31st of December, however it failed and I lost it all - so I'm going to have to look for a better blog writing software package :|

So the year is over, and a new one rolled in with a bitter taste this year - I was bored completely out of my head and then was completely over the whole 'new years shit' when there were no cafe's open. Yes, I had the caffeine withdrawals :|

So I've had a somewhat good 2008 I think... started a new contract back at EDS, did my uni stuff and got high distinctions for the subjects I did, went to some conferences and traveled a bit (but not quite enough..).

So what am I aiming for this year?
- Go back to Europe - I really cant wait until I go back to London, Germany and the Czech Republic again - My friends cant wait to see me again, and I want to see what is on offer over there. Plus there's some additional places I want to visit, such as Italy, Spain, Russia, the Skandanavian countries, Ireland, Scotland and Wales... and so on :)
- Further Learning - I've been given an offer to continue my masters with CSU - but I'm not entirely sure I have enough time at the present moment, but considering I didnt do any industry certs in 2008 I'd at least like to consider something like that.
- Further my professional skills - I'm already working with some awesome guys in the US on a voluntary basis on a great project which is really helping with development skills, team work, and working with distributed teams - but I also want to increase my skills by learning a new language (I've started on Ruby and RoR for now). I figure that if it turns out I dont like it I haven't really lost much...
- Get fit again - yeah, I think I say this every year, but since my back has gotten work I really need to strengthen my core, especially if I want to reduce the pain and be able to board etc :)

So this is part of the list I suppose - there was more originally but I cant remember :)

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I really dislike Christmas shopping - something about this time of the year causes people to turn into complete idiots - no one realizes that there are other people around and trying to move about is just mayhem. The number of people I have tried to slide past is uncountable and the number I've wanted to kill is there as well.

But that is not the only problem - what about when I'm required to be purchasing certain niceties for my family? Not only is the family more extended (which means more presents and less chance to 'recycle' ideas) but I seem to have no fricken idea of what my family actually wants. The kids, while not clear at first thought, are somewhat easy - soft toy for Anna, some edu-tainment book for Fletcher (try to get him away from the Nintendo etc), for the 'extended' part its a board game classic to share - ahh, family.

Now, for my sister and her fiance - well, no idea. I'd rather not encourage bogan any further in the family (yes, I'm so pure...) so that's a no to things like 'chopper reid' or anything Bundy, and buying my sister something to allow her to sit down for hours on end using a laptop just encourages lazyness - a laptop scalding your legs should be though of as a warning device - if it cooks you then your using it for too long in a bad position (i.e. take a break or move to a desk).

Then what about Mum and Dad? Well, mum can sometimes be easy - books, that way I can read them when she is done :) But Dad? Well, no idea there, he's into the whole fishing thing, and mechanics and mapping and stuff but what kind of present for that can you buy, which wont be a) heaps expensive, b) boring and c) he doesn't already have?

I think the problem boils down to this: Either my family is too 'boring' to be able to buy 'original' presents for, or I don't know them well enough to be able to fulfill this requirement. Just another great reason to avoid this stupid commercialization.

Also, I'm unable to find a decent cafe in Wagga - no where is as good as Cream! Maybe I'm just spoiled.

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I've heard that question being asked so many times its getting beyond a joke. Why have retailers started asking this stupid question to customers paying with credit cards. Without actually being a retailer with a credit card service myself I'm not sure, but I'm guessing the decree was handed down from the banks and the CC companies.

But why? Credit cards haven't needed pins before (yes, PIN, not PIN Number) - the only reason you would use a pin would be to get a cash advance, which costs more than normal credit. Ah hah! Maybe its a clever scheme for people to get confused, use their PIN and thus changing the transaction from a credit purchase to a cash advance, which has an additional interest rate!

The problem I see here is that it confuses the shit out of people... I was at a cafe today (hurry up and bring in the touch cards) and the dialog in front of me was as follows:

Clerk: Paying by EFTPOS - sure, which account?
Customer: Credit please.
Clerk: Credit, ok is there a PIN number for that?
Customer: Um, I dont know, I cant remember...
Clerk: So PIN number or nothing?
Customer: *bewildered look*
Clerk: Oh well look it seems to have gone through as just credit - signature please.

While this was only about 20 seconds of confusion you could imagine this progressing - especially considering this same question is being posed at large retail stores, like Big W et al.

Retailers, wake up - try not to change things too much, your customers (for the most part) are simple minded...

Addendum: It would seem that this 'scheme' has been going since June 08, which is funny, cause I sure as hell never received any communcations from my banks. www.penorpin.com.au has the 'details' - still, touch cards are the way I say...

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I drove to Moruya on Saturday to shoot the photos at my aunt's wedding in a 'professional' capacity... I use that term loosely because it was a family thing, and I'm not that good at doing wedding photography (actually i really do need to pull out my camera more often..). Aside from being super windy, and knowing that I would be exhausted by the end of the day, and the heat, the wedding went quite well, and the photos were taken (and they are now ready for processing Monday night when I allocate time to it :D)

The thing which Irked me though was that it seemed like every single person there had to take their own freaking photos. Let me stop right there and say what the f*ck...? I'm there to take photos, good quality photos, and I'm not charging for it (consider it a wedding gift), plus who ever wants them is welcome to ask me for a disc which I wont charge for (prints only...) yet it seems that every time I tried to frame up a shot I'd have to re-evaluate and recompose because there was someone taking their own photos with their pocket-compacts in my frame.

First it was pop, then it was pop again, then it was the brother in law, then the sister... then someone else. I realize this was a low key wedding, and its a special time and everyone wants to remember it, but I'm sure that my Aunt and my (now) Uncle want their pictures without someone else holding up a camera in the frame. See I find it really weird, and its a hard line to draw for some - your at a wedding and it's a special thing, so why not stop worrying about taking your own photos and enjoy the damn ceremony?!? I think the problem is that people are becoming too cheap and don't like the idea of paying a photographer to make prints, so they think they'll become a photographer too.

I honestly think that if anyone else asks me to shoot at their wedding I'll probably accept under one main condition - everyone else puts their damn cameras away - if I see one person in my frame trying to shoot, or one flash going off screws up my exposure I'll take the camera and shove it up their arse - after the ceremony of course - I cant really interrupt... 'uh scuse me - just one sec... yeah, you sir, can you please get the fuck out of the way? thanks :D'

And whats the other thing... smokers... not just smokers in general, but the really idiotic stupid ones. I'm sure everyone has seen this before. Your in a petrol station, sitting on thousands of liters of fuel et al, and someone pulls in with a cigarette burning away, or a passenger is smoking - or even worse, they light up in their car, most of the time with the window down.

Now, I know that there was an episode of myth busters where they kinda proved that a cigarette doesn't really ignite fuel that easily, but honestly, why chance it? The myth busters experiments are controlled, and small scale and so forth - but comparing myth busters to a real live fuel station with vapor everywhere, and sitting in a car, with the window down and sparking up? Fucking stupid!

Why do people toy with this stuff. They risk more than themselves - can you imagine the impact of even a small fire in a servo? People who think that a smoldering smoke isn't a problem need to consider this - there are special torches and bulbs used to check fuel levels in tanks because even they can cause an explosion.

Thats me for the weekend - stay tuned for more :)

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I'm sick of this crap weather today. Its crazy, cause I'm going to London where its always (well mostly) crap weather, but I think today is an exception. Currently the bottom of my jeans are wet. I also think my shoes are wet, though I'm not able to confirm cause my feet are cold. Oh, and I'm tired as hell too..

The unfortunate side of this is that I'm going to the coast tomorrow to do the photos for my aunt's wedding, which is on the beach. Aside from the fact I'm going to be exhausted anyways... well lets say it'll be a long weekend. I'm due back at like, 7pm that night, after driving and shooting almost all day, and I have to go out to Kim's party - bad line up of events :|

I ended up buying some software today - it only cost me $20 - its for taking screen captures - Normally I wouldn't mind paying for something I find useful, but when the main point of purchasing it was to do something for EDS then personally I think EDS should be paying for it - but no, it would seem that $20 is way out of budget (just like we cant afford something like a hotel room to go and test internet access etc). Eventually I bought it my self and added it to my Portable Apps... I wonder if I can charge them for the usage :D

The problem with this is that the whole 'IT Contractor should provide their own tools' mentality comes from the US-ness of the company. But the difference here is that the contract states that I will use the tools which EDS supply me with, which kinda means I cant use my own tools, right? I compare this to bashing my head against a wall, but not quite a brick one :D

To top this all off, my internet is still down. The tech came yesterday, but I wasn't able to reach the stupid building manager who doesn't answer the phone or the emergency number, so now its been rescheduled to Monday - how crap.

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(Note: this is a bit of a geek post, but it could apply to you, dear reader... who am I kidding, there's like 2 people reading this :D )

So I was in Wagga Friday night and Saturday, and my friend came round to catch up for a coffee while I was watching over my nephew. He was in the process of changing over his internet connection, and as a result the email address he'd used since I've known him (about 6 or 7 years) was no longer... there. So, being the friendly helpful person I am, I kindly convinced him to spend a whopping $10 on a domain and have it integrated into Google Apps.

Now, Gmail is 'fricken awesome' - I love it, and its really handy and fast - and being able to have Gmail for my @whatever.com domain is even better. There have been some complaints in the past few months about Google Apps being down and CEOs jumping up and down about it because they want their email NOW, but my response to that is: if your so concerned about it, host your own exchange cluster, or pay for a 'dedicated' exchange cluster to be hosted - Gmail is great but for a large corporation Exchange still shines through (just) - unless your not a Microsoft-based office.

Anyways, I'm off track. Set up was really simple - infact I think the hardest thing was finding a suitable domain name. Domain discovered, it was just a matter of visiting their signup page, choosing the I want to buy a domain tab and then following the steps.

For $10 the domain is registered with GoDaddy.com, and you can tell it to auto-renew so you don't have to worry about it disappearing. Then after that, set up your admin and initial email address, and your done. Google automagically sets up URLs like webmail.yourdomain.com so you dont have to remember any weird URLs - it really is that simple.

I would honestly suggest to anyone running a (small) business, or even people who aren't but rely on their email, to go ahead and do this - it costs you $10 a year, but thats very damn cheap for piece of mind that if something happens such as changing your internet provider or what not you'll still have your emails - plus you can set up like 50 email addresses - thats heaps!

Ok, so thats my plug for Google - great work :) now give me heaps of free shares! (one can only wish) - I guess the difficult part now will be getting my friend's old ISP to keep his email going for a month or so until he's notified all his contacts.... *sigh*

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I spent a few hours last night up in the office of Cream trying to sort out their D-Link routers... it was quite frustrating, because I had told them I would be able to fix up and secure their networks, however after I applied some settings, boom - the internet connection fails, and no matter what I tried it would not reconnect.

I went home to ponder the issue considering that they might need to replace the router and the problem there was they were without internet. Sleep was fitful, while I was exhausted by 10pm I managed to wake up at 1am and not be able to get back to sleep, regardless of any chemical assistance. I went back at 7am, had a coffee... or 3 (yeah, caffeine buzz!) and after some strategic restoring to defaults, reconfiguring and testing everything started working *ta da*!

So, I've come to this conclusion:
Every single D-Link router I've had the 'joy' of working on or with seems to suck majorly. Nothing seems to work properly, they continually fail and they're the worst product ever

If your considering getting one, do yourself a favor and.. dont :) Personally I'd recommend a Netcomm - they've been great for me, or even a Linksys WRT and load up the custom firmware DD-WRT, Tomato or OpenWRT.... much better!

Anyways, crisis averted, and I predict that in about 2 hours I will collapse with exhaustion. The upside is though that I've formed a business relationship with my favourite cafe, and thats a GoodThing™

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So houseofbroc.org went off the air for a few days - but its back now!

Unfortunately the domain registration renewal processes didn't work, and I wasn't quite aware of this - and the domain auto-renewed and was redirected to a 'squatting' site while I sorted it out (ass holes - I'm just glad it wasn't something like a companies domain... that would be painful).

And now what have I learnt from this ordeal? No one is to be trusted :D

Speaking of trust - I was nice enough to receive a call from my bank today - the conversation went something like this (warning, this is a rant, so .. enjoy!):

me: hello
bank: Hello Mister Savage - this is Generic Bank Teleworker number 18232 - I'm calling regarding a personal banking matter
me: go on...
bank: Ok sir just to confirm your identity could you please tell me your date of birth and address?
me: no
bank: sir?
me: no, I'm not going to give those details to someone who called me, and infact I've said this every single time you guys have called (ok they dont call me that often..) - infact I have even sent in a formal complaint via Email, but have not received a reply for this.
bank: i understand sir what we can do is give you a phone number to call back on or yo....
me: look actually could I talk to your supervisor please?
bank: sure....

So, long story short, I spent about 10 minutes harping onto this bank, which is somewhat a large bank in Australia, complaining about the severe stupidity of calling people regarding their bank details and asking them for their details - most people (e.g. the 2 who probably read this drivel) would understand why its such a big deal - but for the uninitiated or non-geeks (wtf are you doing reading this then?) let me explain...

Say your mum, or grandparent has an account with XYZ bank... and they have a 'personal banking matter' to be discussed with them - perhaps there's an issue with their monthly transfer or something, so XYZ bank calls them, and asks them for their DOB/Address etc and they trust that the person at the end of the line is really from XYZ bank... but, what happens if I call up from QWE Fraudsters pretending to be XYZ bank (I could easily steal a statement from the mail) and ask for said details (DOB/Address)?

Now, this social engineering, which mum or grandparent have been conditioned for by XYZ bank have just given the details required to discuss banking matters over the phone - QWE Fraudsters could even change the account address, get balances, perhaps even set up internet banking or reset phone banking pins?

I dont have a problem with banks contacting myself or others in regards to banking matters - I mean, its part of day to day businesses - but there is a better way to do it, such as asking them to call back, send a text message with a reference number, send a secure email (e.g. email through online banking) or some other way - just don't ask for personal details on an outbound call to a customer!

Seriously, I would have thought that institutions like this would be smarter - don't even get me started on the minimal details required to access your account over the phone...

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People, I have realized, are rude - and I don't just mean 'bump into you and not apologies' rude, I mean... extremely rude.

Take, for example, tonight. I went to see a movie, paid my $15, went into the cinema and sat down waiting for the movie. All was fine and the movie started, but no more than 1 minute had passed before the group of posing teens started talking - and it wasn't just a few words, it seemed to be a full on conversation. Now normally I'd let it pass, count it as a once off - but it repeated again, and again, but it wasn't quiet long enough to lean forward and tell them to SFTU.

So that was going on, but I still watched the movie, and enjoyed it, until the phones came out. What the hell is it with people being unable to ignore their phones for 2 hours while they watch a movie they paid for. Its not like they left it on so it would ring, and not like they held a conversation, but seriously, why write a text so long you have it going for a few minutes? Not only would you miss part of the movie but your no doubt annoying other people too. I'm probably the most 'connection dependent' person I know of, yet I can manage to ignore my phone for the duration of a movie.

But that's not all - the phones are put away eventually and the movie continues. Then during a somewhat quiet point in the movie (yes, they do exist in action movies :D) to the left and behind me there are two asian girls having a full on conversation, which honestly lasted for 4 minutes. 4 MINUTES!!! Its a movie, shut up and watch it. If you or your friend doesn't understand English good enough to understand it properly, perhaps get the movie out from the video store and watch it at home, not when I'm trying to watch something I've paid for.

So, there you all have it, those are my 'movie going hates' :)

But that's not all. There's other things going on, such as:
- Rudeness from staff at cafe's and retail outlets - how hard is it to say thank you or please, or even make eye contact with someone?
- Rudeness of other people doing things such as 'pushing in' when going to pay for something, or being impatient et al.
- Inconsideration, not only from people (e.g. making noise late at night, super loud music, blah blah) but also from other things, such as... well building managers and garbage collection services. I mean, who the hell collects garbage at 6 in the morning, or even at 8am, every single freaking day, sometimes including sunday!

Hmmmm god I need to stop ranting - I'm looking forward to seeing my cats tomorrow... :D

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I'm on a train back from Wagga to Canberra - I get of the train in Yass and then catch a bus from Yass to Canberra (because there's no direct from WGA to CBR - how lame!) I'm in a carriage with 2 elderly people in what is supposed to be 1st class.

But the thing which is most annoying is the speed, quality and coverage. In Europe you can catch a train to almost anywhere - jump on in London, end up in Berlin overnight. Here you have Sydney to Melb, or the other way around, the Gahn from Adel to Darwin and well, whatever else - its pathetic, and freakin expensive. Plus the trains are so slow. We're traveling at I would guess 100k/h and well, its due to the crappy lines and aging rail fleet we have.

I know I was spoilt in Europe, the rail network is awesome, heaps of coverage, and really easy to use. In fact it was that good its one of the things I am most looking forward to when I go back over in April! I dont think that there was anything more relaxing then sleeping on the train to Stuttgart or Koln in the Schlafwagen (even though the bunks are a little small :P).

Anyways that's my rant. Oh yeah, the carriage's need power outlets in them too, just like the ICE :D

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