^{houseofbroc.org}

I've been waiting almost 1 month for US$1000 to come over from the UK into my account - it never arrived and after lots of calls and messages backwards and forwards its finally turned up back in the UK account... well all is not lost, but I have to get the money out of there somehow...

That's just the start of my post - something I'd like to draw peoples attention to - it turns out that you can trademark colors now...


If ANZ can trademark that hue of blue then I'm going to trademark the color Nipple Pink!

I am supposed to be moving this weekend, into a house in Campbell - its further from the city but that's quite possibly a good thing (you know, encourage me to ride my bike more etc...) but the fact that I hate moving really isn't helping me at all (god I *HATE* moving...)

Not much else is news, well not much else is decent news, so I'm going to leave it at that.... yay.

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I was talking with my friend today - she has a website for a certain store which might sell some form of animals. Unfortunately the website is kaput, it doesn't work. They had paid a guy a few thousand dollars to purchase and setup an online shopping cart system, theme it up and all that customization stuff.

But, it would seem that the fail whale hit big time on the site - the guy who did it actually SUCKS badly at I think everything he attempted. He's using HTTPS and the site doesn't even have HTTPS enabled (Fail 1), The site is full of 404 errors (Fail 2), There's no optimization for search engines etc (Fail 3), there's an 'Under Construction' image (Fail 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10) and even without the style sheets it looks crap (epic fails!)

Now, my friend had spoken to the douche who 'did' the site - they asked him to fix it, they've also asked him to install the update for the cart software - 1 year later, nothing has happened.

The problem initially is that no one asked me first - just 'cause someone is 'available' (e.g. convenient like this guy was) doesn't mean its a good move. Shop around, ask more then 1 person, ask your friends, but expect to have to pay for these things...

So whats the solution? First, beat up the guy who caused the Fail Whale - he doesn't deserve to be allowed to continue a business. Ever. Second, a letter needs to be sent requesting a refund on the labor - it would be handy to see an itemized invoice before doing this - a lot of people will try to claim 'I did it at cost' on this, so do some research first. Third of all, hand it over to me. I've helped a number of people out fixing up their sites. These things might only take 10 hours to fix - lets see, 12 months of your site being down, loosing heaps of potential customers, versus spending another $1k and getting it up and running within a week...?

So, thats my vent for the time being. People - Please don't pretend to be good at stuff when you only have 10% of an idea... :|

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Yes, it's true - the other week I was told there was no more work available, and there for I no longer had a job (hurrah!)

To be honest I'm not really upset about it. Sure, I'm a bit pissed off because I know that what they said wasn't the whole truth, but if they want to lie then fine - game over, no skin off my nose - except I'm unemployed :P

So as expected I've been looking for work - I have to pay the bills somehow. Unfortunately, as my dad likes to remind me, I'm not great at saving up 'just in case' money - so I can survive for a few weeks without work, but after that it gets to the 'move into a cardboard box' stage (hey, so long as I have internet and power for my laptop - and my mattress :)

The funny thing is (or maybe not so funny) that the job market at the moment really stinks - especially for in Canberra, considering all the 'State of IT' crap that went around last year etc. So while I've applied for the few positions that I've found suitable and discussed things with a few agencies I've also been looking for alternative income sources.

Recently I got into action and set up my business things properly - you know, bank accounts, logo, cards, registrations, all the legality crap (its really quite exciting.... not...) - and so now I feel I'm in a better position to get my own kind of gig off the ground - you know, break free, no one to answer to except for myself :P

Unfortunately though building up your own product takes time - which I have a lot of, but what I dont have a lot of is the other thing you kind of need to survive in an economy driven world - money. As a result I've looked at freelancing online. There's heaps of sites available to do this through, Elance, Rent a Coder, ODesk etc etc, and then there's the good old 'do it your self' way. The problem with this freelancing gig is that the market is kind of saturated, which means everyone is undercutting each other, and as a result the expected rates are quite low (and by low I mean $20/hour for development work). There's pros and cons to it - you get to work at home on your own times, but $20 an hour isn't really much when you think about it :|

I think the best way to get around this issue is to look for fixed bid jobs - something worthwhile which you could theoretically set your self onto doing it as quickly and as best as possible, and that way if you can get a good enough turnover there's time to make money and time to work on your own things...

So I guess we'll see how this all goes - I guess in the long run I can really just resort to selling my body on the streets ;) Or working at the snow... Hrmmmmmm

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Let me put this out there - I've been having a shit year.

To be honest I cant really think about something that has gone right this year, well aside from getting out of bed each morning. Things have been shit for a while and to be honest it can get pretty depressing. One of the problems is that I've spent the last 4 months pining for an awesome girl who I lost to someone else and can't seem to get back - sure I could try nefarious and evil tactics but is that really the right way to go about it?

So I've decided finally that I need to get away, by any means necessary. I applied for my UK visa the other night and I have the Biometric interview for that this Friday - all things going well I will, hopefully, have flight booked and all my crap packed ready to leave by the end of May/start of June. Some people (said awesome girl) liken this to running away, but personally I don't think it is anything like that.

I've had plans to go overseas since before I came back last time, so when you think about it, this is taking the opportunity to go over again and do what I want to do, and if it give me some time away from all the crap thats making me feel down then how is that a bad thing? I guess in the long run if I am running away then it's for a good cause. But anyways, who said I wont be coming back?

I've got a few aces up my sleeve at the moment which are just itching to come out - they need a bit more spit-and-polish, but it wont be long now and I'll finally be able to see if the time and trouble were worth it.... These things are a gamble, but I guess thats where all the fun is.

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Imagine your in the comfiest bed in the world... its 6am, Sunday morning, its cold out and your keen on sleeping in until 10... 12 :)

The next minute, it begins... a deep rumbling shudders through the building, then the squeaking/squealing follows and the floors shake this carries on slowly for about 20 seconds then BOOM, and it starts about 5 seconds later.

Rinse, lather, repeat like 4 times and that pretty much describes what happened last Sunday, and actually pretty much every day during the week here :( The fricken building manager for some reason likes to shift the dumpsters about (you know, so they dont overflow under the chute), and he must be saddistic, 'cause he always seems to do it before 9am every single time.

So this has finally driven me nuts and I came up with this:



Sure, I have too much time on my hands... and as soon as I find the sticky tape (or chew enough gum!) I'm going to stick it up on the doors.

There, enjoy that revenge mofo!!!

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So I've been on a casual term with a company I used to work with, for a short while in between positions. It's been pretty good, I mean, work is work, but then I got sick. I was out of action for about a week, I couldn't go into the office because it was just bad, but I could work from home, which was fine.

The problem started on the first day. I put in about 6 hours work setting up the base infrastructure for this webservice which is supposed to be easy and flexible and future proof etc etc, so of course I was setting up interfaces and abstractions, preparing for IoC containers, ensuring testability by allowing for stubs and mocks to work against abstractions etc etc.

So 3pm rolls around and I'm having a little issue testing, and I let them know this, look into it a bit more, and send them the codebase at 4pm. Now I'll be the first to admit that it was scarce on comments, but the code wasn't that complex. 40 minutes later I get an email back from one of the guys I work with, essentially stating that I overcomplicated it, I'm missing comments etc etc - keep in mind that I started working on this at 10am and they told me it was due at 3 (they had to send it to 3rd party developers - which was wrong to start off with).

So Tuesday morning, still sick, I go into work to sort some things out. To start with I get chewed out for being late, but that is another matter, and then they claim that I didn't deliver what they wanted and obviously working from home wont work - at this point I'm getting pissed off, and explain to my boss that I've delivered exactly what they wanted, and that the comments were fixed up that evening (on my own time mind you), and that sending the core of the project off to 3rd party developers to work on was wrong etc etc. But, once they say something they have to stick by it or something, so I can't work from home. What a load of shit.

To be honest I'm a pretty good telecommuter - I'm able to get my work done, I don't get distracted - essentially I can work anywhere I want to and get the task at hand completed and completed well. Its just a shame that companies not set up for collaboration cant see this.

But then the stinging blow came yesterday - another guy who I work with was sick yesterday. We went into the board room to discuss the project and what happens? We get him on the phone and allocate some work to him. WTF? He's a full timer, who get sick leave, and he's also working from home. How the hell does that work? What I see here is that full timers not only get sick leave, but also get the opportunity to work from home if they need to - but casual employees, who don't get paid sick leave, who don't get paid for public holidays etc, don't even get this option to ensure that they can get a suitable salary.

To be honest I don't think this will last much longer - I've already had to start dipping into my savings account. I think that if they want me to work for them then it'll be on a contract basis only and I'll work on my own terms, and where ever I like.

Aghhh! I need to find a new contract...

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So I want to buy an iPhone - I've umm-ed and ahh-ed about it for long enough and I really want one now :)

I'm with Vodafone, I have been for years, and they've been pretty damn good for the time I've been with them. So after checking that they still were doing the iPhone thing online I went off to the store and enquired. This is where the first problem came up. Seems that the only plans available for the iPhones are over 24 months.

Now, normally 24 months wouldn't be an issue - but I want to (yeah yeah, one day) go over to Europe for a while, so I don't want to be locked into any long contracts if I can avoid it. I asked about paying the difference of purchasing outright etc, but the answer was a resounding noooooo :( I even went to another Vodafone store to confirm - same answer.

They did suggest that I could just pay out the extra 12 months of the contract and terminate early - but to me that seems like a copout and a waste of money :( Why would I throw away $1200 and a year of network access? Fools.

So now I have two options, considering I don't want to goto another network:
1. Purchase an iPhone from eBay, adjust my plan with Vodafone to suit and hope it works.
2. Go with the 24 month contract, same price, bonus phone but possibility of the account not being used for up to 12 months.

The iPhone is available on eBay for about $1000, the 16GB one that is, and there's no guarantee on it either (the warranty could be sketchy too). Considering I'm paying the Vodafone account at the moment anyways I feel that I might as well just go with the 24 months. I guess if I do get overseas I could always ah... lend the account to someone to use (and maybe pay part of for the opportunity) while I'm away... or maybe not, we'll see.

Stupid Vodafone :P

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It seems that I read into things way too much, and that I don't really live in 'the moment' - as a result I really feel that I have deprived myself of some awesome opportunities - all because I thought too much.

This thought came to me this morning, after I had tumbled out of bed and somehow ended up in the shower. Standing there while the hot water worked its magic on my muscles I thought back to a night several years ago - at a party in Canberra, I only knew a handful of people, and one of my close close friends was there - We were in the kitchen, talking, close, and looking back there were so many chances to kiss her - but my mind was ticking away worring about all the semantics and logistics of what might become of it - and what happened? Well, she ended up with someone else and we kind of fell apart... we still talk, but yes.

But on that night another hand of cards was also dealt, and luck had it that I met another very fine lady who I've been close with for a long time.. I guess if I had taken that chance at this party I might not have even cast a second glance at her?

But then the pattern comes around full circle again, which the other awesome lady - lets say we were engaged in a level of relations - I'm not going into details - and lets just say that during this period where relations were happening was probably the times where I didn't have a care in the world, where my back pain didn't really exist, where my head spun and so on - but of course I didn't act when I was supposed to - and as a result I lost her to someone else. Maybe its the best for her, she seems happy, and that is what matters...

So, how about some more? Well, there's the girl who I lost at the start of this year, which was entirely my fault. I met Kim recently after I broke up with Bernii - which was just after I got back. Kim was... is, enigmatic, fun, easy to be around.. words cant explain - but then I got worried... what if I fuck it up, what about my plans to go overseas.. so we broke up, cause I wouldn't talk about it - but we stayed together. I do admit, Kim was very persistent, which was great - we got back together some months later, and once again things were good... but then my head screwed up again, and somehow I worried about Europe and her feelings and decided to stop it all again - but she still persisted. Unfortunately I've always been somewhat apprehensive to talk, or to let people into my life or to let me feelings loose, but looking back (ahh hindsight) I should have just let go.

So what happened? Well, she started meeting new people, and now she's seeing someone else. Am I over it? No, will I be? No idea.

What should someone do in this situation? Kind of difficult to say to be honest, I know that things will be kinda hindered until I do Europe properly, try and get my life on track completely. When I think about it I am kind of a boring person - I don't really do that much, dont really take risks, etc etc - I think I need to change that - as I said - these opportunities were lost because I didn't act in the moment, I had to think about it - perhaps I should just let go?

Now is always a good time to start, I guess...

[/Deep & Meaningful]

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ATM transaction fees - these used to be acceptable - you goto a non 'Your-bank' ATM, draw out some money, you'll get charged maybe... 60c or similar.

Recently though, I've been seeing something worse come up on the screen when visiting my local Hole-in-the-wall to get some dollars out. 'You will be charges $2 for using this ATM if you continue. Would you like to proceed?' What. The. Hell. Two fricken dollars! Why they hell are the banks providing the ATMs suddenly charging $2 to make a withdrawal? Its fucking rediculous!

So why the sudden change? It's as a result of the ATM Fee Reform - something conjured up by the RBA in order to make fees at ATMs clearer for users - but how do they justify the increase in the fee? I mean, in all seriousness I have never, ever, noticed a $2 fee for just using an ATM - except while I was overseas (and that's pretty acceptable).

The options? Use cash-out with EFTPOS (I really don't use EFTPOS enough where cashout is available to benefit from this), or walk to your nearest 'Your-bank' ATM - great option, considering my bank only has 1 ATM, which is on the other side of Civic. Sure, I could change banks, but to be honest, my bank is pretty flexible - if need be I can send money to my family and it will appear a second later - unfortunately this between banks doesn't exist...

So, we're all boned then... :)

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I really like Ruby on Rails - its an awesome framework, its easy as hell to get up and running and it is - in my opinion - powerful and readily extensible.

I'm using a really nifty cloud host, called Heroku (actually, its now their free version, called HerokuGarden - and when I go prime time with anything I'll move to Heroku its self...) - to deploy I just issue a command (git push) and it reloads everything. Creating a new app is simple, and while they give you a URL which is .herokugarden.com you can set up a CName to point .com to that site.

In short - awesome. I'm playing around with getting subdomains to work, but I'm not really able to get wildcard CName going (yes, it would seem perhaps they don't exist?), as I went out and purchased a month worth of slice hosting, to play around - If I cant run it in the cloud then I'll just run it in my own host...

But then the trouble started. Slicehost is pretty cool - you pay for the memory, you get an address to connect to and re-imaging with whatever is a piece of pie. But that's just the thing, it's a blank slate. So you look into the guides, and here we go...

1. Install updates
2. Install dev tools
3. Install ruby and compile and link
4. Download Apache2 sources, compile, link, install
5. Configure Apache - and it goes on, and on, and on....

Did I mention this was all in the console as well?

Now, lets compare this to Windows - Yes, I know, you need to pay for a license, but if you have a big name app, or require the flexibility of your own server or VPS then it's worth the cost. So, IIS is there, you set up a site. 5 minutes, all GUI.

Next, configure the framework - if it is .NET then it's already there - other stuff can be done with the web deployment toolkit - once again, most of this is GUI based. I'm not sure what Rails needs, but... still.

So all this, and we haven't even dipped into things like SSL... IIS makes it simple, Apache and OpenSSL - I'm not too sure. So why hasn't someone made this simple? Why is Linux still stuck in the console ages? Am I just complaining cause its 'hard' etc?

I think, though, the problems may be solved - if - Cloud hosting gets some more features (perhaps... DNS hosting and flexibility with records...?)

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