A Man and his Penguin

Q-fan disabled? What the heck?

I've recently become dissatisfied with the noise my computer makes. I've heard much noisier computers (usually computer-store-built) where the machine sounds like it's taxi-ing down your desk and preparing to take off. But I was still irritated with mine, especially in comparison to Linda's computer and my old computer.

I assumed it was due to more holes in the case. My old computer has a grille at the side, as does Linda's, and the whole front of her computer is a mesh. I was thinking of getting the drill out and putting a few more holes into my Antec Sonata case!

So I started thinking "Hey, this motherboard has heat pipes on it. Could I run it without a chassis fan?". After checking with the manual, it sorta seemed like it was possible, so I tried it. Disconnected the chassis fan and went into the hardware monitor of the BIOS.

And noticed exactly the same level of noise as before. The motherboard reached 30 degrees before I decided that the experiment was dumb. Just as I was about to kill the power, I noticed that "Q-fan control" on the CPU fan was disabled! I knew from past experience with Linda's computer that "Q-fan" is the feature on Asus motherboards that turns the fanspeed up when you need it, and turns it down when you don't need it.

I had assumed that this was turned on, as during the summer I had noticed the CPU fan increase in RPM as things got hotter. But this must've been an effect of hot air coming into the case and making the fans turn faster by some kinetic effect.

Long story short, I turned on Q-fan for the CPU fan, re-connected my chassis fan (manual speed control), and now my computer is whisper quiet.

Earlier on I also re-routed the cables inside the computer. In their previous configuration I think they were blocking airflow into the PSU.

I was getting a weird rubbing noise before when both cores were pushed to 100%, but I'm hoping that my cable management will help stop that. I have no idea what was causing it, to be honest.

Drive-thru sterilisation

Our cat had to be sterilised today, so we took her to the vet. The vet had actually moved a hundred metres down the road, so it took us a few minutes to find it.

And it actually had a drive-through lane out the front of it! Drive-through desexing... what a brilliant idea! Snip snip, you don't even need to turn your engine off.

Of course, that's not true, but there is a drive-through lane at the front of the vet from the previous tenants.

Last night I realised that I don't think before I write, and in the past and present that has hurt people. And it's had an impact on my life that I possibly can't even comprehend. I mean, I love to retell the story of Stan and the timer record on his VCR, and I only tell that story to make people feel less embarrased - but now that I think about it, Stan wouldn't want me spraying that story around, because it would make *him* embarrased.

So from now on, I'm going to be much more careful. I have two new mottos:

"Next time you want to make some kind of idiotic pronouncement, you should first get up, step outside and plunge your head into a bucket of iced water" - what a judge told Alan Jones, featured in the "radio advertisement" for an earlier incarnation of this website

"If you don't have anything nice to say, then STFU".

In other news, I had a reasonable day of sales thanks to eBay. A couple of people bought dishwashers from eBay, and some others came in to look at the d/ws and bought other things too. I also got some product training on Asko dishwashers, which really was a gap in my knowledge before.

Oh, and the rep from NEC told me how to get into one of the hidden menus on the NLT20G TVs. You press Display, then the first three colour buttons, then Menu. This brings up a menu where you can lock certain functions, set a maximum volume and stuff. Turn the TV off to exit the menu.

The first time I put in this code combination, I did it incorrectly, and actually discovered a SECOND secret menu! I think I did Display, all four colour buttons in order, and then Menu. This one seems to give you the ability to move the picture on the screen and change the RGB, brightness and everything else to do with the panel. Excellent! I love finding secrets in consumer electronics.

Battle of the Choirs

Seven has been pushing this show for the past week, and the Sunday Times TV guide had Charli Delaney on the front cover.

It always struck me as a bit naff that Charli, who's never been in a choir nor been musically trained, and who recently admitted that she can't pick a harmony, got the gig as judge on a show about choirs.  It's like Chopper Reid judging a debutante ball.

I just watched the show anyway, because Charli is quite useful as eye candy, and I like choral music. I used to sing in a choir.  The first act (Vox Harmony) was terrible; they sang Love Is In The Air very out-of-tune. I'm surprised they were even let into the studio with so much metal on their faces, too. You wouldn't know they were a choir, they just turned up to the show dressed as though they were going to TAFE.

The next one, The Blenders, was an all-male, supposedly barbershop-style group. They took The Idea Of North's arrangement of "Man In The Mirror" and didn't really do very well with it. Charli was very impressed; she said that "if their rendition of the song was played all around the world on loudspeakers, we'd immediately have world peace". Er, yeah. Something like that. The Blenders seemed to be just the slightest bit queer, too.

Next was some god-awful group of plastic-faced girls who, sadly, won a silver medal at the "Choir Olympics" with Pink's "Get the party started". How many times does Pink harmonise with herself in that song? About as many times as this sad excuse for a choir did. Shit song, shit performers. If I'd been on the judging panel, I would have told them to go home immediately and get themselves a competant choirmaster. Or disband - whichever is easiest. Seriously though, their performance lacked harmonies and individually their timing was way too loose.

Then there was a gospel choir, made up of just anyone who wanted to join. As you'd expect from this sort of community gospel choir, they were all very enthusiastic. They sang some song that I had only heard in advertisements. You could see potential there, but they just need more direction. Considering that there were plenty of men in this choir, it was very difficult to hear any bass - very disappointing, and I'm surprised the judges never said anything about that. They criticised this group's timing, which was fair to point out, but IMHO the lack of bass was the biggest problem.

Charli suggested that they all hold hands before they perform. Gawd, what the hell *is* she doing on this show? I think this is the dumbest thing I've heard her say, and remember that I've seen 9 years of her playing to kids.

They've all performed, it's nearing the half-hour mark, now we're going to find out the winner? No. Instead, they're going to drag it out another 30 minutes by having them all sing songs that they've had only a couple of hours to arrange, learn and rehearse. Needless to say, this was simply embarrasing to all performers. You can't expect anyone to be any good at something they've barely even learnt. Has as much to do with choral performance as parallel parking. To add dumbness to insult, the songs chosen were all Kylie Minogue songs. Written for a single voice, and remember that Kylie's songs don't usually have much in the way of harmony.

Now do we get to hear who's the winner, if anyone still cares? Well, kinda. The Blenders go through to the next round. The gospel choir are eliminated. But apparantly, the other two groups are so evenly matched that they need a tiebreaker. Gee, it's lucky they were given a song each two weeks ago to perform in the event that there be a tiebreaker!

A couple of ad-breaks later, they perform. The plastic girls sing "I Don't Feel Like Dancing", which was an easy opportunity for them to score some points as the song already has harmonies in place on the original recording. Vox Harmony get Wonderwall - tough deal of the cards. They actually (in my opinion) nail it as much as any choir could nail an Oasis song. Good seperation and interplaying melodies between the males and the females in the choir, but only after a very shaky start.

I recorded the show because my Indian friend Shiv would kill me for missing another piece of footage of a Hi-5 member, but I'm certainly not going to watch it again.

If Charli is serious about becoming an actress (and not just an "adult entertainer", lol), she should learn to act like she's qualified to judge a choral competition. That's a bit harsh, I guess. Good actors and actresses study up for their parts by walking in their character's shoes or going to the library and doing research on the main themes of the TV show or movie, so they can better prepare for the role. Charli really needs to take a crash-course on music - attend some choir rehearsals, buy CDs of internationally-renouned choirs as well as a book of listening notes to go along with them. Otherwise, she's likely to make a fool of herself many more times this series.

But the show is foolishly done anyway. There are so many better choirs in Australia. Why weren't Men In Harmony or the Perth Harmony Chorus invited onto the show? Or will they be?

The choirs should sing two contrasting songs each as the main round. Keyword: contrasting.  Not "Two songs that 94.5 play twice daily".  If the show is going to give the choirs songs to sing as a tiebreaker or a second round, they should at least give the ensembles the opportunity to use harmony and SATB seperation. Otherwise, there's nothing to judge on, as Charli demonstrated with "Get the party started" (she disagreed with the judges who said it was too simple a song - "Well that's the way the song is, so the girls nailed it!").  And, of course, give the songs to the choirs weeks in advance rather than hours.

The only problem with my idea for the show is that Charli could be made to look even more foolish by it. Imagine if a choir decided to sing Mack The Knife:

Charli: I think that was the wrong song to sing. The lyrics don't sound right. It's as though the song was translated from German or something.

For those of you who don't get the joke, don't worry. You don't *need* to understand the joke, because you're not judging a musical competition!

Battle of the Choirs. 1/10.
Pros: It makes me realise that the choir I was in was excellent.
Cons: It's not so much a "battle" as a wet towl flicking contest.
Verdict: Don't watch it. Even Charli fans should stay away.

Nomination: Worst date of the year

I went out at 2 o'clock and got back at 5pm. In three hours, it downloaded a mere 76 megabytes of Sydney White. Pathetic. It uploaded 132 megabytes. It's actually called ADSL because it's "asymmetric" - higher download speeds than upload speeds, so this is ridiculous that my upload speed is higher.    

Where was I for all this time? I went out with a girl.    

I was very much expecting this date to be a flop. Past experience, you see, although in the past I've never had such low expectations. We ended off meeting near her building and walking to a nearby cafe.    

When we got in and put in our order, I paid, as you'd expect me to. "Thanks for my coffee, Chris"?  No.  She grabbed a newspaper and started just reading it. I don't care if it's a date or not, that's quite rude to start reading a paper when you're out with someone who's not a member of your family. Small talk ensued anyway, during which she said that she wanted to marry a rich man. The whole "date" lasted about a half hour, and resulted in her saying that she needed to leave to get ready for something else.    

Well, I'm glad I was able to take up a bare minimum of her time. Unfortunately, it took close to an hour by foot, train, and CAT bus to get there, so it ended off being a complete waste of a couple of hours for me. The only redeeming part was that I stopped in at the ABC Shop and got The Idea of North's album Evidence. I'm not in the mood for it, unfortunately.    

The really dumb thing is that I told Tanja at work that I was going on a date today, so on Thursday she'll undoubtedly ask me how it went. She was the one who kept telling me that I should ask out Amy from the head office, and we all know what happened when I did ask.    

Right now I'm in a rotten mood. Sydney White won't have finished downloading until probably some time tomorrow morning, unless I get a faster seeder and no leechers. My body feels crap too because of the coffee. I also miss Arnie and I get really upset when Dad compares the new kitten, Molly, to Arnie. I woke up this morning in tears because I had dreamt of Arnie. And I know that tomorrow, when I go into work, there will be a flurry of problems that I have to sort out - I'm sure there will be a couple of deliveries for the Eastern States that Nobel's couriers haven't bothered to deliver yet, and won't until someone gets on their back about it.    

I'll continue to be in a bad mood, but I'll stop bringing you all in on it. Have a good night, everyone. Even though I feel like telling everyone to get stuffed.

I bought a Wii

Yes, in the end I couldn't resist, and I bought a Wii.

It's a nice console - very compact, and the Wiimote is a fantastic controller. I still think the Nunchuck looks like a penis pump, but oh well.

I did 4 installations tonight after work, so I'm surprisingly cashed-up at the moment. I was thinking of going into town tomorrow and seeing if I can get another Wii game, or possibly a classic controller and some sort of redeemable Wii points card. I'd like to be able to surf the web in the lounge room, and it would be really cool to play all those classic games too.

My Wii age is 28, apparantly!

Telemarketer: "I'm not trying to sell you anything"

Today, I kept a telemarketer talking on the phone for a full 9 minutes!

He insisted that he was going to send me a free cameraphone with some credit already on it, and that he wasn't trying to sell me anything. He told me that the call costs were 1/6th the costs that they normally would be, but when I asked him to admit that he was trying to sell me telephone calls, he denied it.

This went on for 9 minutes. At about the 7 minute mark, I heard a series of beeps on the line. Must've been the signal to him to wrap up the call, but he persisted.

I should have kept an eye on the timer and made sure he ran 3 or 4 minutes over time. If two people per telemarketer per hour kept the conversation going for 10 minutes without a sale at the end of it, we would see a 1/3 reduction in telemarketing calls.

Let's say a nice chap called Rajah works for a call centre. In the hour between 12pm and 1pm Western Daylight Saving Time, he calls someone who immediately hangs up. He rings another person, who immediately hangs up. He rings someone else who keeps him talking for 10 minutes. He calls an old lady, who is so lonely she will talk to him for 15 minutes and then buy whatever he's selling. His next call gets an immediate hangup. The call after that has him talking for 10 minutes without a sale.

Out of the whole hour, assuming only two of his callees keep him talking, he's wasted 25 minutes. Lonely old ladies like to keep talking, even when they know you don't give a shit about whatever story they're yammering on about (sorry, I'm in a bit of an rude mood tonight!). So that's where I got the extra 5 minutes from.

Multiply that by 8 hours, and multiply that by however many telemarketers there are. That's an immensely huge blow to the companies that employ telemarketers. Another trick: Always ask to speak to their supervisor. Be polite about this, but firm. You must always get your way. When you get put through to the supervisor, be as absolutely rude and difficult as possible. If more people did that, they'd need to hire more supervisors, and more supervisors means less of a return on their telemarketing.

We must waste as much telemarketer time as possible. In an ideal world, nobody would buy from telemarketers or even give the impression that they are interested in anything. But all the while we still just say "Not interested thanks", we're letting the telemarketers call more people each hour. Wasting their time means they call fewer people per hour, which means lower sales for them.

I also like sending back SAEs that have been sent as part of junk mail. Preferably with as much crap as I can put in them. They not only pay for the mailout, but also the mailback, and they get no sale from it. I've just thought of a better idea - fill in the form, ask for a huge amount of the product, and put a fake credit card number on it. They will spend time entering in all the information, but not get a sale out of it because the card number is not valid.

Telemarketers and bulk junk mailers are the enemy, and we must make the enemy's war machine much less efficient.

The world's best tape-measurer

You'd think that there's not much technique to using tape measures. You'd think that anyone can get an accurate measurement using one of these little things.

But so many people simply CANNOT use a tape measure correctly.

On Dishlex and Westinghouse dishwashers, the front is curved, and the top is flat. Rather than measure the width from the top of the dishwasher, people try to measure from the front, and then say "Oh, it's a couple of millimetres too wide!". When they put the tape around the front, they are also measuring the curve, which adds distance!

Today, I had a real numbnuts come in and wanted the cheapest dishwasher he could find - a one-only Conia POS that had been sent to us as replacement for one that we sent back as faulty. Firstly, the guy came in with the wrong measurements - he had measured his space as 600mm wide and just 555 high. I pointed out to him that he probably meant 855mm high.

He asked to borrow my measuring tape. Rather than put the metal end of the tape on the floor so that the tape was pointing straight down, he had the end of the tape a couple of centimetres away. "We can't get this one, it doesn't fit". I calmly bent down and held the tape where it should be, and it measured 853mm (or something like that).

Then he obviously didn't realise that you could retract the tape with the push of a button, because he started talking to his wife and gesticulating - with the tape still out and in his hand! The metal tab was banging against all the cooktops. I hope he didn't scratch any. He then stress-tested the dishwasher by pulling at the door and pushing the hinge. I think he ended off causing the door to go out of alignment, which of course made him pull at the door even more.

They eventually bought it, but during this whole episode some people came in and immediately fell in love with a Panasonic LCD that we had on display. Tanja got the sale because I was too busy trying to prevent that guy from pulling the dishwasher apart.

Tape measures are not a difficult gadget to use, just remember to measure along a flat surface, and keep the tape parallel to the surface! Otherwise, not only will you get inaccurate measurements, but you'll look like a damn fool.

Arnie

We all miss him so much.

Two little cores had two little chores...

Tovid (or more precisely, dvdauthor) doesn't want to know about the .vob of Keith Potger on Spicks and Specks, so I decided to transcode it to something. Preferably, something that is virtually lossless. And then Tovid could convert it back to DVD format.

I had the idea of converting it to DV format, but I couldn't be bothered finding the correct options for ffmpeg on the command-line. I toyed with the idea of putting the footage into Kdenlive and converting it to DV that way, but then I wondered what Kino's video transcoding capabilities were like.

I dragged the VOB onto Kino and it immediately offered to convert it to DV format. Precisely what I was looking for! I noted that the program seemed to be multithreaded in its conversion, but it wasn't maxing out my processor. I guessed that the final DV file would be 5 gigabytes (in the end, it was 5.4 gigs - good guestimate)

At the same time, I wanted to Blacklight the movie "Lovewrecked" to put onto my Walkman, so I did that.

And I was met with a beautiful sight in the System Monitor: Both cores working at 100% of capacity.

Lm-sensors doesn't read my CPU's temperature correctly, it is always too low. But the temperature DOUBLED from 21 degrees C at idle, to 42 degrees  C at 100% load. I dreaded to think what the real CPU temperature was - 60 C? 70 C? My chassis fan is set to medium these days, and the actual CPU fan speed wasn't going up much so the heat must have been dispersing correctly, but I still got worried and brought a pedestal fan out to blow straight into the empty floppy drive bay :-)

Heh. But I *love* to see both cores earning their keep. It's the first time I've ever thought "Gee, I wish I had bought the Q6600 instead"^!

^Note: Even with the Intel Core 2 Quad, the encoding processes might still have just used 2 cores. I was encoding with a total of 6 logistical GHz this time; if I had a Core 2 Quad using 2 cores, it would have been just 4.4 logistical GHz.

Funny flash animation.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jvdkuyp/flash/see.htm

Hilarious.

It was posted on the Ubuntu Forums.

So close but so far

One of my workmates (the one whose computer I put Ubuntu on) is going to get an EEEpc for her son, after my encouragement. Before you start saying "Good stuff, you got her son into Linux!", the busybody at the distributor told her to wait for the Windows XP version, which will apparently be available from retail channels. Damn.

If there's an extra charge on the XP EEE, she might change her mind. We'll have to see.

Funny Microsoft parody website

http://www.claimyourvista.com

And check this out: Ubuntu Cola! Have a look in the forum too; people getting confused with the Linux distribution :-)

Rejected

Yes, I will never be able to call Retra IT Support again without feeling awkward.

My boss often says, in relation to selling extended warranties, "If you don't ask, you don't get". At least I asked, otherwise there would be no chance of getting.

But of course, I feel really bad now.

Wish me luck!

At the IT support office for Retra, there's a girl called Amy. I often have to speak to her whenever the POS connection has dropped off and refuses to work when you reconnect.

She's got a cute voice and is always super-friendly, and once I sort flirted with her while she was fixing one of these regular problems. I've never even seen her!

My workmates know that I have a bit of a thing for Amy. Tanja today was egging me on to ask Amy out. I don't know what it is about Tanja, but she's always confident that girls will like me; so I suppose that has boosted my self-esteem.

Tomorrow, or Wednesday if it's flat-out tomorrow and Linda hangs around all day, I will ring the Retra IT support line and ask Amy out.

Just thinking about it now makes me very nervous - how am I going to feel if she says no? But then, wouldn't it be so great to go out with her? It certainly would!

So, wish me luck!

EDIT: I don't think enough of you were wishing me luck. See the later post for even less information.

Did you say sorry?

Eight years ago, I was in high school and the whole "sorry day" thing started. My tutor was talking about it in class to us, and I interrupted.

"What am I expected to say sorry for? I never did anything to the Aboriginies."

My tutor answered "Sorry Day isn't about apologising. It's about expressing sympathy for what happened to the Aboriginies, not attributing guilt."

Now, in 2008, let's look at the newspapers. Is this an apology (expression of guilt), or an expression of sympathy?

Front page: "Excerpt from the National Apology to the Stolen Generation". "the historic apology" "has vowed to move an amendment to the apology"
Page 6: "News: A Nation Apologises".

Etc etc. On the news they talk about the "apology to indigenous people". Sounds like an apology to me.

But I didn't do anything. In the 1950s my grandparents on my father's side came to Australia. My family on my mother's side has been in Australia for much longer, but also doesn't have a history of mistreating Aboriginies.

And now that the apology has become a reality, there will be a push towards giving the "stolen generation" monetary compensation. If Kevin Rudd puts a heap of money and initiative toward helping the Aboriginal communities to stand on their own feet, and house and educate those who are currently hobos, I'm all for that; I'd like to see greater Aboriginal participation in our society and I think there's a lot more they can give.

But merely handing money to Aboriginies has, by and large, not worked. It's probably made their problems worse. Monetary compensation would likely cost more than cleaning up the remote communities, and would amplify the problems.

This issue is now out of our hands, and even if Kevin Rudd makes a stand against compensation, we can't expect the same of our traditionally backboneless judicial system.

I'm going to Busselton

I'm going down to Busselton from Sunday morning to Wednesday afternoon. I'm really looking forward to it. Work has been up and down lately, especially yesterday and today because we put in a new counter.

On Facebook I added Hobowars. My stats are all at 10, except for begging (which is nearly at 5). I want to work heavily on my begging so I accumulate some cash and get enough money for some good weapons. Due to a competition where I won HW$250,000, I now have a +70 and a -20.

Tonight my father and I went up to the Joondalup markets. We saw a painting there that would look great in our living room, if we get the okay from Mum. She works Friday nights, so I guess I'll have to get a digital photo of it to show her. We also had a futuristic ice-cream (solid until it hits your mouth) and had a good long look at a giftware store - the one where I bought the little penguin for the top of my computer.

I'll try and get online during my stay in Busselton; to train my hobo and maybe post blog entries. But I probably won't be able to. I'll be back Wednesday evening anyway. I've Blacklighted two episodes of Quantum Leap from the DVD box set I bought the other day, so I can watch them on the coach down to Busselton.

I realised this morning how ugly I am

I recently got a haircut. Usually when I get a haircut and I see my reflection in the mirror I think "Hey, I don't look as bad as I usually think I look".

But this morning I looked in the mirror and really didn't like what I saw. My face is the wrong shape and even if it was the right shape it wouldn't be an attractive face.

I realistically don't think I'll find any girl who likes my face, or who can see past it.

Whirlpool are cockroaches

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Whirlpool is the absolute worst supplier I have ever dealt with. Their DOA (Dead-On-Arrival) policy is "If the product has a fault when you take it out of the box, we will try to weasel out of our obligation to replace it".

I actually had one rodent from Whirlpool claim that the customer had called Whirlpool to report the fault 21 days after buying the product. The truth was that the customer had called the next business day after unboxing the product (the 7th day after buying it) to report the fault, but was immediately told to contact the service agent. One of the slightly more senior staff at "Customer Care" admitted that to me after I confronted her with it.

Whirlpool are supposedly a "preferred supplier" of our group, yet not only has our rep never come into the store, but he wasn't even sure if he was our rep in the first place! Useless bastards!

"Guess who's got some mouthes to feed,
Guess who's got a Whirlpool?
Guess who's got to wait for parts,
Guess who's got a Whirlpool?"

Piece of shit products. That's it, I'm not selling Whirlpool anymore.

On Thursday I had the idea to put a cheap cooking package on eBay, to capitalise on the success we've had with the Nobel dishwashers. After looking at pricing for Chef, Nobel and Emilia, we settled on the Emilia 60cm stainless steel pack because we can sell it for a brilliantly-low price of $899! It's a fan-forced oven, a twin-motor slideout rangehood, and your choice of a gas or electric 4 burner cooktop. Italian-Made with 2 year warranty.

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NEW-Emilia-60cm-Stainless-Steel-Cooking-Package-899_W0QQitemZ270204782154QQihZ017QQcategoryZ20712QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

And then today someone came in with a Betta Electrical catalogue, wanting to buy a cordless phone they had advertised. Two things I noticed: Firstly, Betta are advertising fridges made by Hotpoint! Not only is Hotpoint not a brand name at all, but also who would want a fridge which advertises itself as being a *hot* point? :-P  Second thing I noticed was that exact same Emilia cooking pack, your choice of gas or electric cooktop, for the same price :-(   But hey, so few people see the Betta catalogues, I don't think it will slow down our own sales.

Just watched Hairspray on DVD

My family sat down and watched Hairspray on DVD - even my father! He genuinely enjoyed it - we can tell because he didn't fall asleep during it, and about ten minutes in he stopped fiddling with his model railway and actually sat down and watched for the rest of the movie. I also noticed him tapping his toes :-)

I didn't notice this at the movies, but the retro animation during Come So Far (Got So Far To Go) is really well done and as visually spectacular as the actual movie. Whoever animated that section should be congratulated.

And, of course, Amanda looks nice, especially during the final scene :-)

-----

I downloaded a Linux media centre project called Entertainer. It's heavily in development - so much so that there's not even a bugtracker for it yet as "there would be too many bugs right now to track". Looks nice. But I can't get it to run - it complains about not being able to run a GLX function and then crashes with a floating point error. The source code is so modular I'm slightly too intimidated to try and debug it myself :-)  But maybe I'll do it another day, or try a later development version when one comes out.

Or I could use one of a dozen excellent media centres?

Mandurah Trip

Today, my parents and I took the train down to Mandurah. When we got there, we caught a free bus to the Mandurah foreshore; what a beautiful place. The weather was a bit overcast at the time but eventually it got better.

We had fish and chips at Cicerello's, then sat on the grass for a little while; and had Simmo's ice-cream.

But then we went to the bus stop that we got off from, and waited for about 20 minutes. No bus came. Then I looked to the left and saw the bus; it had gone a different way and wasn't stopping where we were! So we walked to the place where the busses were actually stopping. Waited another 20 minutes, and another bus came. By the time the bus came there was a long queue of people, and these buses were the original CAT buses, so they were really tiny! The bus filled up before we could get on it; so we had to wait ANOTHER 20 minutes. Finally, two more tiny buses came along and picked up everyone who was waiting.

We had a nice time in Mandurah, and we got text messages from our friends Sonia Mansour and John Meadley saying that they wished they were there too. But the incident with the buses did put a bit of a dampener on the day - I mean, we were waiting for literally an hour. This is on a Tuesday - I hate to think what it's like on the weekend.

Pictures to come soon. I think we only took 3 photos anyway.

BUILT a new computer!

I wrote a long post to tell you all about how I went and bought the parts this morning and 6 hours later I had a fully-functional computer, but Friendster chewed up the post.

Let's just say that my father is thrilled to be getting my old computer, and I'm thrilled to have a new computer, and I'm looking forward to putting "Linux Computer Builder" onto my business card.

Take The Last Train To Clarkson

Or, in this case, I took the first train to Mandurah this morning!

I got onto the train at Greenwood at about 11:10am, noting that it had "Mandurah" on the front (rather than "Esplanade"). After a couple of stops, the driver made an announcement, congratulating us for being on the first Mandurah train.

It was a reasonably busy train already, and the situation got much worse when it arrived at Perth. Every man and their dog decided that they wanted to be on that train! We were packed in quite tightly, and I don't think many people were able to get on after Esplanade.

The route was quite scenic for the first part, with the river on the right-hand side. Going over the Narrows and the Mount Henry Bridge were nice too.

Just before we reached Bull Creek station, the train suddenly applied brakes and came to a complete standstill. Then it started moving away again, very slowly. The driver came onto the intercom and said that, not due to anything on her part, the train had automatically applied the brakes, but that it seemed to be alright again. It's just teething problems, I think.

As we went through Cockburn Central, I noticed the Cockburn Central shopping centre on the right. I made a mental note to get off there on the way back and have a look.

The last part of the journey was boring; not scenic, not interesting. We finally got into Mandurah, and there was a rush of people going to a bus service that I think was taking people to the foreshore. I declined; instead I picked up some souvineers (a commemorative flag, badge, card, and a timetable) and hopped back onto the train. This time it wasn't anywhere near as busy.

I did get off at Cockburn, and walked to that shopping centre. There's a Dick Smith's there which was quite big, with heaps of products; also there's a Big W and a Sanity where I bought 3 DVDs for $40 (Team Hi-5, Travelling Circus, and Jimeoin & Bob Live At The Famous Spiegeltent).

I also came across an award-winning bakery, where I had a meat pie and an LA Maxi Ice. It's exceedingly rare to find places that sell 600ml bottles of LA Ice, and the last place I saw one was in Melbourne! So I was pleased about that.

The Sanity didn't really have many CDs. It mostly had little plastic cards with the CD title and tracklist on it, and you take it to a kiosk which burns a CD for you. What's really completely dumbass is that it's the same price as buying a real copy of the CD in the first place, and it's not like you can buy a digitally-downloaded CD as a present! You can also bet that they compress the music too, making it useless for listening on a Dolby Pro-logic compatible surround sound system.

That's my day. Oh, a few minutes ago another Chinese chick tried to practice her English with me on Skype, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with these Chinese girls again, and I started talking non-stop about sex. She's not responding anymore.

My Youtube videos

So, how are my Youtube videos going?

In last place for popularity is "Italy's Big Kev", with only 122 views, one rating (of 5 stars) and one comment.

Next is "Where did my program go on Ubuntu?", with still a paltry 478 views, three ratings (5 stars) and 13 comments.

Top of the list, proving that the dirtiest humour is also the most popular, is "Accidental Goatse reference in advertisement". This one has 3,561 views, 20 ratings (4 stars), and 14 comments.

If you haven't looked at them, please check them out, leave ratings and comments, and also leave comments on this blog for your Youtube videos too.

A complete shock

When I went into the house in mid-afternoon, I found my father talking on the phone to my sister. This happens with regularity, so I didn't think anything of it, and I started to make coffee.

From listening in to this side of the conversation, I began to realise that something was very, very wrong; he was talking about my sister being alone at Christmas and about "you feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you" and "I know how devastating it is". At first I thought that my sister had maybe lost her job, but toward the end of the call I had a more accurate idea.

When my father hung up, I asked him what it was about. He told me. My sister and my brother-in-law had separated, just days after their last visit here.

It was such a shock, and it still is. We said we wouldn't tell my mother until she gets home from work, but she called a little while ago and my father is still on the phone to her; so he must be telling Mum right now. I can only imagine how Susan and Mark are feeling right now. I have no idea what brought this on, but there were a couple of things noticed during their last visit that seemed a little odd.

I don't want to talk about it, really; I don't even want to think about it lest it make me cry. So I'll switch onto a different subject.

There was a VERY recent documentary on Fox 8 this afternoon about the Spice Girls; it was made earlier this month. An almost complete history of the Spice Girls, with a definitive answer on Geri's departure.

I say "almost complete history" because it curiously skips out two noteworthy parts of their history; the 1999 tour ("Christmas In Spiceworld") and the 3rd album! To be precise, they do mention their third album; Victoria says "It was still a hugely successful album", which I guess is an official acknowledgement that some people don't regard it as such :-)  They also mentioned that this album had "American producers" and that Mel C's parts were recorded separately to the others; which we already knew. But other than that, nada.

It certainly looks like Forever is a sore toe that they don't want to discuss. It was a very controversial album that severely set back the careers of Rodney and Fred Jerkins; the album wasn't universally disliked, but the sales numbers speak for themselves. I would have loved a B*Witched-style admission (that Forever was well-disliked and that it wasn't a very good album). But I mostly would have liked an official explanation of why they released just one single from Forever, pulled Tell Me Why off the release schedule, and went into virtual splitsville for six and a half years.

I found it funny that, once again, the Girls implied that the album was recorded much earlier than it actually was. But was Christmas In Spiceworld another sore toe, and if so, why? What happened? Was there tension because Mel C had completely changed her personality? Is that the real reason why she was so adamant about not reuniting with the Girls?

I wish I'd recorded the doco. I might have a look and see if it will be on again so I can record it.

I'll also let y'all in on a secret. Keep your eyes peeled for an advertisement in the paper on Boxing Day. We're going to do something that will make all our stores as busy as Myer, in the area of browngoods especially.

A Tale Of Two Suppliers #3

In part 1, I told you some anecdotes about how Conia and Teac went the extra mile to keep us and our customers happy; and how Panasonic behaved quite shamefully.

In part 2 (which wasn't actually called "A Tale Of Two Suppliers"), I said that Conia (who have now changed hands) became a bad supplier, and Nobel is a good supplier.

Now here's part 3.

During winter, Fujitsu offers cashbacks to try and get people to buy their inverter air conditioners. They're not the only air-conditioning manufacturer to offer cashbacks nowadays, but they started it. Anyway, a customer bought an air conditioner toward the end of the August; just snuck in by 5 days. The air-con was on backorder at that particular time so I couldn't fill in the serial number of the outdoor unit, and the customer went away on work business for a while too.

On the 26th of September, there was still 5 days left to send in the forms. The customer came back and together we filled them out, and I personally sent the form off.

A month ago, I got a phone call from my customer; she hadn't recieved the cashback yet. Fujitsu can't find the form. I find my copy and fax it through, and was given a reassurance that they will get right onto it and mail out the prepaid Visa card.

This morning, my customer calls; they have not received their cashback, and Fujitsu reckon that they received the forms 2 days late. Idiots. I call Fujitsu, and speak to a very tight-arsed person called Pheobe. She refuses to budge - "She's not entitled to the cashback because she didn't follow the terms and conditions" BULLSHIT!

I got very angry on the phone. Tanja thinks it's funny when I get angry on the phone, because normally I keep everything bottled up and under wraps. Finally I had to write a letter to somebody at Fujitsu to force their hand. I ended it with:

I'm sure I'm not the only one who wouldn't like to see the customer to go to the Consumer Commission with complaints. I would like to continue selling Fujitsu air conditioners, but whether I and my colleagues continue to sell these units is dependent on your actions in this matter.

I stopped short of calling him a snivelling little meat-head with a staff full of disembodied pricks.

By contrast, back when we were waiting on the "45 white" dishwashers, Dave from Nobel offered to upgrade them to stainless steel for free, since he had those in stock. We already get ridiculously good pricing from Nobel, so it would've probably hurt his back pocket to offer to do that, but he does always go the extra mile for us. And I really appreciate that.

Debbie from Vax also doesn't mind dropping off a handful of Vax bags if we are in desperate need for them and don't want to order $500 worth of the things. She always drops them off same day! And once she actually called one of my customers to advise him on how to use one particular part of his machine, after he had asked me. I really appreciate that. Things like this give me a lot of confidence in selling from a particular supplier.

Suppliers who are good will get a lot of business from me personally, and endorsement from this blog. Suppliers who are shithouse will get slagged off. Note: If you treat my customer in an unfitting manner, you'd better be prepared for a firestorm!

No More Blues

Last night, I woke up at 4am with a splitting headache. So bad, it felt worse with my eyes closed than with them open.

Eventually after a Panadol, I managed to get back to sleep, but the headache persisted to today. Even today I was feeling under the weather. I compounded it by watching a DVD documentary about the people of New York at the time of September 2001, and also became quite sad as well as ill!

Today did improve though. I bought the webcam that I mentioned before, but have since had trouble with Kopete getting people to look at it. Two people haven't had any luck looking at my cam, which might be a Kopete problem. I might have to install AMSN.

The other thing is, tonight I got asked out! Someone asked me out! Completely out of the blue - I'd chatted to them years ago and they'd never seemed interested. But today I noticed from their handle that they were feeling stressed, and I sympathised, and then suddenly I got asked out. Next Wednesday though; still this could be good, as I think we're very similar people.

It just goes to show me: Hugh is there for me when I need him most. I do feel privileged to have such a great god.

Miserable

Tonight I went with Susan and Mark to play pool. A couple of their friends came too.

Before, I was depressed.

During, I was okay.

Afterwards, I was depressed. Still am.

I've asked Hugh to help me with my loneliness problem; I hate to say it, but I've asked many times before and it doesn't seem to help. Call me selfish, but maybe he's just too busy with other people to pay any attention to me. He wouldn't be the only one.

In the post-Christmas sales, I'm going to buy a swag of computer parts and put together a mean Linux machine. Of course, this will require me to read up on how to put together a computer! This whole "I'm going to build a powerful computer" thing has come about because I don't have a lady to spend my money and attention on, and also because I had to wait half an hour for Blacklight to transcode Wayne's World 2 onto my Walkman ;-)

The pace at work has picked up. The 45 Whites (Nobel 45cm white dishwashers) have come into Perth, so they're now in stock! I sold an air-con, cooktop, and chest freezer today. Unfortunately I also played a role in selling a Toshiba notebook with Windows Vista. That's something else I should look into: How expensive it is to build laptops from parts (I heard that it's possible, but I don't know who would distribute the shells for it) and whether I could offer Linux machines to my customers that way.

But yeah, the main focus of this post is that I'm lonely, depressed, miserable, and I feel really let down by one person who did finally take her virus-infested computer offline the other day.

A man walks into an electrical store...

I'm writing this from work; don't tell anyone!

We just had the strangest transaction ever.

A man walked in, tattoos over his upper body. The tattoos were visible because he wasn't wearing a shirt.

Linda served him with his purchases, which were a blender and hair clippers. He tells her that the price on the blender was $69, when in actual fact it was $79. She did accidentally overcharge him $5 on the clippers, but he was still $5 ahead.

Later on, he came back in, still sans-shirt, just about to go to a funeral and needs a stereo system! In under 60 seconds he chooses what he wants, which is $195. He can't work out how to open the CD tray. Who cares? He hands Linda $200, tells her to keep the change, and walks out with the stereo!

We almost pissed ourselves, it was so funny.

------

Here's something else funny I saw on Cnet. It's probably the funniest review of a terrible product ever. Click the "review" tab on that page to see the full, hilarious review.

10 Creepiest Craigslist Casual Encounters. Also funny reading.

What do you mean, "you've already voted"?

I had the morning off work (as I worked 8:30 to 8pm Thursday), so I went to the local Australian Electoral Commission office and voted.

Nobody I talked to today believed that it was possible to vote early. Well, I only found out through the AEC website.

I wish all candidates good luck tomorrow.

(I think Labor will win by a large margin. I will be represented in the figures for swing).

As I was driving home tonight I got really excited about the election process, and for some reason quite proud of my vote. Voting is mandatory here. Last election, I had a lot of cognitive dissonance regarding my vote; this time I am pleased with the way things went.

Beautiful girl

I love Skype sometimes. I set my status to "Skype Me" and see who messages me.

Right now I'm talking to a beautiful Venezuelan woman. Tomorrow I might be talking to a shy Chinese girl.

And the sound quality is great!

A funny thing happened!

A funny thing happened at work today. It was just Linda and I working on the floor, and Michael, the rep from Emilia (cooking appliances), came in to set up a display of his products. Suddenly, it got really busy. As I was serving a customer, I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw the rep talking to some of the customers who were waiting.

When I had finished serving, I turned around and Michael was holding a calculator up to me. "That's the cost price of a cooking package that these customers want to buy." I looked at him quizzically and he explained "They asked me about ceramic cooktops, and I showed them our brochure. I said that the Recommended Retail (Price) of this pack was $1200 and they're interested in what the cash price would be."

I worked out a cash price of $1000 based on the figure displayed on the calculator screen, and we got the sale! The rep actually sold his own products directly to the customer!

A few minutes later, I was serving someone and Linda was having difficulty talking about air-conditioners to someone. She knows even less about air conditioners than I do (she asked me "This guy says he wants an inverter - what's that?"). Not her forte. But I heard Michael talking to Linda's customer about air-cons, and even knew the model numbers of the Conia air conditioners (not really a surprise; he worked as a Conia rep for a couple of years).

But something serious happened too. I got the cheapo courier bloke who we occasionally use to deliver a Samsung LCD, and then after work I went to the customer's house to set it up. As soon as I turned it on, I noticed something awry - there were flickering pixels. It was dead on arrival. It's very uncommon for a big-name TV to be a D.O.A, but this TV and the Sony TV last week, both delivered by the same guy, were both D.O.A.

Tomorrow is supposed to be my day off, but now I've got to organise a replacement TV, deliver it myself in the boss' car, set it up, send back the old one, pick up a Conia TV from the shop, deliver it and set it up in another customer's house, and then help someone else with their Panasonic DVD recorder. That's a sizeable chunk of my day gone. Damn.

I'm all shook up

Today I went into the city with Angelica. Had a nice time - Angelica is a real sweetie; I just hope I wasn't boring! (there's not much to do in the city). While we were having coffee, there was a busker singing opera to my right (who was really good), and then after he left a classical guitarist started up in front of me. He was great too; very relaxing music. And then a bagpiper with spiky hair, tattoos and leather kilt played his original rock compositions - I'm not kidding! He wasn't half bad though, considering that his instrument is naturally quite horrible-sounding.

We went into the ABC shop (which bears more resemblance to a BBC shop) and had a look at some DVDs. I bought The Idea Of North in concert (a'cappella quartet) and Oklahoma with Hugh Jackman for my father.

I was a bit of a fool - I drank a Cafe Gelati, which is two shots of espresso and a scoop of ice-cream. I had forgotten what one shot of espresso does to me (makes me feel jumpy and sleepy), let alone what two would do! Still, it was made nicely. I still feel jumpy and sleepy.

Unfortunately I had to pretty much rush home from the city because my mother wanted to go into my workplace and buy a vacuum cleaner. She wanted me to go with her and show her which vacuum I recommended. So we did that.

Right now I'm waiting for Angelica to come back online so I can talk to her again. I find it difficult to come out of my shell, and today was no exception. But yeah, I enjoyed her company, and I'd like to spend some more time with her, and come out of my shell a bit more! Angelica is a lovely girl and I only hope that I deserve to go out with her again...

D.O.A

I guess there's a first for everything. A Sony TV that was delivered to my boss' customer's house today that I went to set up, looks like being Dead On Arrival. It would turn on for a few seconds, and then turn off and give 9 flashes of the standby light.

The guy I called at Sony (not our rep, just some tech support guy) didn't know what 9 flashes meant. So I've got to call my rep in the morning and find out if he can swap the thing over (preferably, get a tech out there to see if it's something to do with the customer's power supply).

But yeah, it's the first Sony D.O.A that I think we've ever had at our shop. Not that we sell much Sony anyway.

At work we have found alternate uses for the phrase "D.O.A". One is a way of cooking meat - rare, medium, well-done, and D.O.A!

And we've been mass-mailing our customer database, and one of the envelopes I went to stuff was actually missing its entire adhesive strip. So I said "This envelope is D.O.A - we'd better get the supplier out here to swap it over" :-)

Shiv is back!

A friend of mine from India had his internet connection disconnected by his parents a few months ago. Today, he's back - it's been reinstated for 2 months until his exams, then taken down again for a few months after that, and then reinstated again after his exams.

It's nice to talk to him again!

Unconnected.

Completely unconnected to the iTMS story, there is someone who I'm really disappointed in. They have wasted my time and caused me to miss out on an opportunity. It hurts when people treat you like that. Immature bint.

Oh... it's NOT meant to be sexual then?

Today I discovered that my program accepts Flash Video as input; i.e. downloaded Youtube videos. I came to the decision that my program should be extendable through input plugins. Input plugins would be selected through a drop-down menu labelled "Input Source". Once selected, they would basically open up a separate program which would do all the necessary whatevers to get an FFMPEG-compatible file (i.e. download video podcasts from an RSS feed, rip a DVD, search and download from Youtube, etc). Once they had achieved that, they would pass the filepath back to BlackLight for encoding.

I just found out that Free Hugging is a craze, possibly one which will be as short-lived as flash crowds. Better get my hugs from pretty girls while I still can ;-)

Free Hugs

My father and I went into the city today; he wanted to look in some hobby shops, and I wanted a trip into town for more general reasons :-)  Actually, the real reason why my father *had* to go into town was to see the new William Street platforms at Perth station - the same reason why I went in a few weeks ago!

Anyway, while we were there, there were two girls holding up a handmade sign saying "Free Hugs". There were a handful of guys taking advantage of the offer. Since I was with my father, I was too proud to go up there and give them a hug, even after he suggested it. I suppose that's part of the whole thing about not involving my parents with my interpersonal life.

But the slightly sad thing was that I seem to be craving female affection so much, that I *really* wanted to hug them. I mean, REALLY. So much so that I'll probably go into the city next Sunday to see if they're there, and if they are I'll give them a hug.

That's a bit of a sad act, but such is life. (Why does everyone say "Such Is Life" so much these days? It's like how back in the days of the Spice Girls, people used to say "At the end of the day".)

My monitor is really playing up, but I didn't have time to go to the place in Wangara to buy a new one. I guess I'll go on Wednesday.

I'm quite tired today, because I spent most of last night troubleshooting FFMPEG, compiling a new version, and then writing the GUI frontend. That's the power of Pythoncard though - I was tired, yet I still managed to write a graphical frontend and bring it up to 0.1 release in an hour or so. In fact, in the background, the program is encoding some more Two Ronnies. My eyes are a little bit sore from watching The Two Ronnies through a 1.8 inch screen on the train. :-)

Big Walk 2007

This morning, I did the Big Walk 2007.

The new Esplanade Station makes it so convenient! Rather than get off at Perth Station and then walk all the way down to the Perth Esplanade, I just stayed on the train and it delivered me to the Esplanade :-)  This year the start was in the Supreme Court Gardens, due to some sort of building work.

The actual turnout seemed to be down from previous years, probably due to the dark clouds in the sky earlier on. Unfortunately, the instructors doing the warmup were pretty clueless as to what sort of aerobics constitutes a good warmup, and there was only a halfhearted attempt at stretching. Most of the crowd didn't pay any attention anyway. I had to do my own stretching.

Like always, people started leaving for Fremantle before the actual start of the event, but this year they left even earlier. One of the Rotarians was telling people that they could leave straight after they registered - dumb!

Although there were clouds, there was no rain, and the weather wasn't too hot or too cold. Good walking weather, without much wind. There was plenty of water on the way, and the Rotarians were even handing out sweets for energy. Once again there was visible support from local community organisations for the Big Walk, with a band playing at one of the schools along the route (though when I got to it, they were just noodling around in between songs).

But yeah, the walk was quite nice. I hadn't trained up for the walk this year; by the time I got to Cottesloe, I was really quite sore. I had managed to keep a reasonable pace going, but by the time there was 1 km left I realised that the time was 2:45! Only 15 minutes to go to complete the walk in a good time! It wasn't at all clear if I was going to make it, even though I upped the pace to my maximum; but then finally I rounded the corner to the Esplanade with 2 minutes to spare.

So, I beat my Personal Best for the Big Walk, by 1 minute!

I wasn't too impressed with the prize giveaways. Usually, the announcer says "The first two people to me wearing/holding abc gets xyz prize" or something like that, and so if you qualify you have to rush up toward the stage. This year, the guy from 94.5 was pretty much just saying "The first 3 kids to me get xyz", and then he was just throwing prizes across the field to anyone who could catch them. Once he'd done that for a few minutes, he got fed up and just told all the kids to come up to the table and take whatever they wanted. That was a major disappointment - I was hoping to get some sort of prize this year!

The person who won the car wasn't there at the field when it was drawn. They almost never are!

I spent about another hour in Fremantle, getting some food, looking around the markets and shops and stuff. I sat down in one place with my lunch, and a busker was nearby - he wasn't very good, but I stuck around, and once I finished my lunch I had listened to 3 songs. I decided that, since I had listened to him sing 3 songs, I should pay him whatever it costs to buy 3 songs on iTunes. So I gave him $5.

Then I walked to the other end of the mall thingy, where there was another busker, who was absolutely TERRIBLE.

Not a lot else ensued. I went back to Perth on the train, walked what felt like a kilometre and down a large flight of stairs to change from the Midland platform to the Clarkson line under William Street. Surely they could have built those platforms closer to the main Perth station!

Once I got back to my car, I drove to the shops and bought myself some gingerbread ice-cream. Yum!

Due to other things, which I don't feel comfortable talking about here, this evening I started to feel frustrated. I feel like a particular person skipped out on me without giving me an answer to my question. When you do the Big Walk, you do it with the knowledge that it will eventually end. What this situation amounts to is starting on a walk without knowing how long I'll be walking, and the kilometre markers are simply mirages which vanish as you get up closer to them. As you get up to an official to ask how much further you have to walk, they merely wave into the distance and grunt.

I hate FUD in all its forms

Dear reader,

I hate FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Distrust) in all its forms, whoever spreads it.

Let's take recent events in the world of electronics in Australia. Panasonic first did a FUD campaign against LCD screens (Pana doesn't make large LCDs, only plasmas), claiming that LCDs were no good for fast motion or for dark rooms. Neither of those statements were true; it was just FUD. It's like Panasonic was trying to say "If you buy an LCD, then you'll never be able to watch sport again!".

Now there seems to be a reverse campaign. I don't know who is funding it, but recently there has been some FUD spread about the power consumption of plasma screens. This FUD has gone so far as to claim that plasmas should be banned because of their power consumption. It's like they're saying "You don't want to buy PLASMA, do you? They're going to be BANNED!". A customer even said that they'd heard a story of a plasma screen catching fire. A fairytale.

Even though I personally think that LCDs are better than plasmas, I refuse to support this latest round of FUD. A 50-inch plasma costs 7 cents per hour to run, which is about a quarter of what a fan heater costs to run. A 52-inch LCD costs roughly 5 cents per hour to run. That's fuck-all difference. Plasmas are not going to be banned, there is not even any serious suggestion (outside the loony Green community) that they be banned.

Before you could ban plasmas, you would have to ban an awful lot of other electrical appliances first. Extreme overclockers, for instance. And what would you do about all the plasmas that are already out in people's homes? What about all those being manufactured right now? What about the research and development costs that go into developing plasmas? Would Panasonic, Hitachi, Fujitsu and Pioneer sit back? I don't even think Samsung or LG would sit back and let it happen, despite those companies manufacturing LCDs as part of their big-screen lineup.

And if you banned plasmas, wouldn't LCDs be next? The backlight in LCDs draws a fair amount of power.

By the way, if you've got a laptop or an LCD monitor and you religiously use Blackie rather than Google because you've been told that it reduces your energy usage, then go and fall off a cliff, because you're a fucking moron. Blackness uses no less energy to display on an LCD, because the backlight remains on. And if you have been reading this post and been thinking "Let's ban plasmas AND LCDs!", then please read my post "Reduce Carbon Emissions - Stop Breathing!".
:-)

In other news, I've just finished compiling madwifi from SVN. Wish me luck.

When resolution REALLY doesn't matter!

I bought a couple of cheap CDs at the shops today, and all of them say:

"This CD has been manufactured using ground-breaking, high resolution 24-bit/96-KHz mastering technology. As a result, this music comes to you in one of the purest forms possible while still using traditional home entertainment listening equipment."

All very well and good, but remember that audio CDs are only 16-bit/44.1KHz. One of the CDs is Louis Armstrong, probably recorded in the 1950s. Admittedly, the mastering is good, with even a well-faked stereo effect, but I don't think this $4 budget bin CD really needed the top of the range in mastering technology!

Finally logged into my Facebook...

I started a Facebook profile a while ago so I could add that chick from Call For Help. I quickly found out that Facebook sucks arse as a social networking site.

But I got a message in my hotmail account today telling me that a particular person had sent me a message on Facebook. I recognised the name as someone I went to high school with.

Anyway, I logged in to find that I had 12 friend requests, 9 of them from people I know. And this guy who sent me a message was apologising for being nasty to me during high school. (lots of people were nasty to me back then).

I don't hold anything against those people - it was a long time ago, and we were all very different people back then. But I appreciate the guts it took to apologise, so thanks for doing that.

Since so many people (some of whom I haven't seen online for YEARS) have found me on Facebook, I guess I'll have to log in a bit more often and see what new features the site has.

I still prefer Friendster, as far as features go :-)

Hairspray for the 11th time?

On the Hairspray blog, there's a guy who claims to have seen Hairspray 11 times. If he's telling the truth, then that's amazing.

EDIT: There are a number of Australians who say that they've seen it 3 times, even 5 times. Someone else reckons they've seen it 14 times. That would cost them almost $200. Are these people just lying, or is Hairspray even MORE of an instant classic than I imagined?

Cost + 5%

We had a Cost + 5% night at work, where the customers in our database from T to Z were invited.

Most customers are alright on these nights or days, but there's always ONE who doesn't mind behaving like a dickhead. Unfortunately, I had the dickhead this time.

He started off looking at microwaves; I asked if I could help him and he asked if the prices on the paper bags were the best prices I could do. "Oooh yeah!" I replied, enthusiastically. He headed off to look at the cordless phones, and I spent what felt like half an hour trying to help him choose a phone. He claimed not to have a power point near his phone plug, and asked if there were any cordless phones that didn't need a power point (is this guy for real?).

Finally, he settles on a particular Panasonic phone. Great. But there's a catch: He asks if I can do a better price if he buys a microwave as well.

Now, these prices that are ticketed are invoice cost + GST + 5%. The 5% is an extremely narrow profit; we can only do this on these VIP nights because we know we'll have lots of people come in. Even so, the total profit figures for the night are only about as much as a reasonably-good regular day, plus we've got the overheads associated with having extra staff and sending out hundreds of letters. After everything, we don't make much. But this guy insists that we must do a better deal since he's buying a cheap phone and a cheap microwave.

I feel like telling him to get lost. Instead, I show him the regular price of the microwave - $349, compared with its VIP price of $258, and explain that this is the same price that I'd have to pay if I wanted to buy the microwave (true). He still keeps pushing for a further discount, before saying "Well, you've lost a sale" and walking out.

At this point, I wanted to laugh in his face. "Mate, if I took any more off the microwave or the phone then the shop wouldn't make any money; so it doesn't matter if I lose the sale because either way I wouldn't be making anything; I wouldn't have lost anything.  But YOU would lose the ability to take advantage of these prices, and NOBODY will even get close to the prices I'm offering".

I didn't say that. I just let him walk out - good riddance. If he never comes back, good: One less person to make my job difficult. He did come back a few minutes later, claiming that his girlfriend called and told him to get the microwave, and he did buy it at $258. But I know that he realised what I had wanted to say to him anyway.

Dickhead.

On the plus side, today we got our new fridge! It's a beauty, but unfortunately it doesn't hold as much in the fridge part as our old fridge. However, it has a light, it has glass shelves, it's upside down, it opens the correct way, it draws less power and it doesn't require defrosting; so it's really a step up.  I'm amazed that the old Kelvinator had been running for more years than I have been alive, and has never needed a service.

Angelica has gone to Singapore for a week, but when she gets back I really want to see her again. Even if I have to drive to her place just to get half an hour with her, that would be nice.

Hairspray is officially my favourite movie of all time. It has actually dethroned Madchen Madchen ("Girls On Top"), and judging by the number of people I know who loved Hairspray (Connie described it today as "Gold!"), I think it instantly became a classic. It's a complete reversal - earlier versions were loved by the gay community, and if a straight person watched those versions they'd be thinking "WTF?!"; but this is the first time that Hairspray has been enjoyed by a heterosexual audience (and ironically, this is the first time that the poofs disliked Hairspray, even though many of the producers and directors are gay).

In Spice Girls news, there's a Spice Girls megamix that is tipped to be released at some point in time. I've got a copy of it; though it's actually only a mix of some of the hits from Spice and a couple of hits from Spiceworld.  A friend (who doesn't remember Forever being leaked to the internet, and therefore didn't see the irony of the greatest hits album being released on the 7th anniversary of that happening) claimed that there was a rumour going around that W.O.M.A.N was going to be released as a single. I honestly cannot believe it! This rumour has persisted since 1999 - it must be the second longest running rumour in the history of the world, after the chain mail that "MSN Messenger is closing down unless you forward this letter to everyone on your buddy list"!

MSN hasn't closed down on all the other occasions that I've recieved this particular e-mail, so it's not going to happen. W.O.M.A.N wasn't released on all the occasions that I heard the rumour in the SFN (Spice Fan Network), so people, it ain't going to happen!

Bought the soundtrack album

Yes, I bought the soundtrack album, and I'm enjoying every moment of it. It's so infectious and now I can hear every word! It's $23 full of fun. I especially enjoyed John Travolta and Christopher Walken's duet, as well as all the upbeat ensemble's songs. A special mention must go to Queen Latifah, who sings "I Know Where I've Been". The first time I've heard her sing without wanting to vomit ;-)  I didn't mention it last night but she was surprisingly very good in the movie.

I ripped the album into FLAC, which is a lossless audio format (it's smaller than audio CD data but doesn't lose quality). I also made a copy in MP3 to put on Mum's MP3 player, and I'm going to make another MP3 copy in a high bitrate for my own MP3 player.

I don't remember the song Cooties in the movie though?

A review of Hairspray, by an Amanda Bynes loonie

FUCKING BRILLIANT.

Okay, so you want more than just a fanboi review? Well, tough luck!

I won't go into the storyline, as it sounds incredibly complicated and boring when read; but trust me, it doesn't get in the way of the music. This film is packed with 60s-style R&B that makes you want to get up and dance. This is coming from someone who usually hates anything R&B-sounding, and tomorrow I'm going to go and buy the soundtrack!

One of the reasons why I'm buying the soundtrack is because the speakers in the cinema were terrible. Very low quality. Which is a shame, because fantastic music like this needs to be played so you can hear every note, every voice, every beat!

Yes, I hear you say. But how was Amanda? She was very nice. Her character didn't really do much sadly, but she did have some funny moments in a generally-funny film. You actually only see her in two outfits; the one that I Gimped an Ubuntu logo onto :-)   And a stunning green number at the end of the movie that made my mouth water. Angelica tells me it was actually made from the character's curtains, which I think I read elsewhere.

And yes, Amanda sings! But it's only a few lines. And (I might be wrong but) it sounded like she had a bit of help from her singing coach, Mr Autotune. Still, it's something we haven't seen Amanda do before. And it's painfully obvious that she doesn't dance; oh well, the girl has comic timing and can act. Still, it does raise the question of why she was cast in a musical with SO MUCH music, when she barely sings and doesn't dance. Interesting question. I guess I'll have to wait for the DVD release and all the special features.

Of course, being an Amanda loonie (or a "Penelope", there's an in-joke for you other loonies!), I couldn't bear to see her kissing some other guy and singing about "Now I've tasted chocolate, I'm never going back"!

But yeah, DON'T buy the soundtrack album from iTunes. Buy it from a CD store. I'm not even talking about this in relation to DRM - I'm talking in terms of sound quality! You'll thank me for it later, I promise you. You will be infected with this music. I'm actually seriously considering buying a surround sound system or at least a good stereo from work, for the purpose of playing the soundtrack on.

If you're thinking about seeing this film, don't think. GO AND SEE IT. I had thought that I'd be disappointed, well, I certainly wasn't (well, I was disappointed that Amanda seems to have fallen for some other guy, but I'm sure I'm still in the running). :-)

That is all. Damn, have to do a podcast tomorrow, guess I'll be going into the city to buy the CD a bit later on in the day!

Sorry Vanessa Hodgens, but I can't stop looking at your personal pictures

I feel somewhat guilty. After hearing that Vanessa Hodgens (from High School Musical) had some private nude pics leaked to the internet, I just had to go and take a look.

It's clear that these are VERY personal pictures, intended only for the eyes of her boyfriend. And now I've looked at them. Paedophiles have looked at her nudity. 13 year old boys have probably seen what she never intended for them to see. I feel like I've invaded her privacy, and that I've made her predicament worse.

But here's the really bad part. I've got these pictures on my computer, and I feel guilty about that, but I keep on looking. Those are very hot pictures. I've actually taken such a close look that I noticed that she has a TDK stereo (one with NXT speakers) hanging up on her wall. We've got one at work.

So yeah, I have very mixed feelings.

And there's this guy who my boss knows, who comes into work and asks to use our fax to fax documents to Vietnam. Tanja says that he goes to Asia every so often to have sex. The documents he wanted faxed today were an application to bring somebody into Australia. Very creepy.

And now I think I'm starting on a new search for a girlfriend; the girl who I have been talking to the last couple of weeks has just said some things about me that I really don't appreciate.

Realisation

I found a cool site called Ez-Tracks, which gives you free music; even big-name songs are there legally for free. There are two catches:

1. You have to wade through heaps of ads, and the site probably spams you mercilessly (I used a fake address; I hope the owner of "stuffit@hotmail.com" isn't too annoyed at me!)

2. More importantly, the songs are not with the original artists.

Yep, they're covers, which are very faithful to the originals. Sometimes, they actually find some singers who sound like the original singers. Very impressive. Some of them are a bit lame, like the one of Seal's "Kiss From A Rose", but some are excellent like the one of the Spice Girls' "Weekend Love".

While doing this, I downloaded the Mel C track "Independence Day". This was one of the better covers. While listening to this track, I realised a truth about today's pop music. I used to give Avril Lavigne credit for being the first pop singer to pretend to be a rocker. I now know that this isn't true: In fact, Mel C was doing it years and years ago.

So I'll give Mel C credit for being a wily, history-rewriting bitch who was also years ahead of her time :-)

As part of my ongoing quest to do away with Windows forever, I attempted to find a hard disk MP3 player that I can use on Linux. This quest quickly became depressing; it's down to the iPods (I'm not a zuspar, thank you very much!) and the Creative Zen which I can't get through work.

So I decided to look for big Flash-based players - I mean, my 20 gig player is less than half full, so 8 gigs should be plenty really. I narrowed it down to an iRiver (not sure if we can still get them), and a Sony which looked excellent. Until I realised that you could only put videos on there with drag and drop; music still had to be loaded through Sony's proprietary software. Damn. Why are there seemingly no 8 gig players that use UMS (USB Mass Storage) without a database?

Maybe I have to get an iPod and be a zuspar like the rest of 'em.

NOW PLAYING: "Let Love Lead The Way" by Countdown (covering the Spice Girls song)

P.S. Spice Girls fans will know what I mean when I say "Viva Forever" to a prominent musician who died this week.

The damn lights keep blinking

On Wednesday night, we had a blackout. Later on in the evening, we realised that it was just our street.

When I woke up on Thursday, the lights were back on, but there was a sound in the distance like a car's engine being run. It turns out that the transformer box next door died, and Western Power has parked a generator there.

It's Friday night and the transformer still hasn't been fixed. The generator is still humming away; I can hear it right now. And the lights flicker every now and then. I'm just thankful that I decided to buy a surge protector for my computer, because I don't trust the generator to give clean power and it doesn't look like Western Power will get on to fixing the transformer any time soon.

In other news, I bought a couple of DVDs on Wednesday - Mr Methane's "Let's Rip", The Bridge Over The River Kwai (can you believe I've never seen that film?) and Hancock's Half Hour Series 4. Hancock's Half Hour is pretty funny; my favourite episode is The Missing Page.

Just a warning for you good folks: I bought an Avril Lavigne single the other day (yes, I'm ashamed, but I like the song) and it has that half-arsed copy protection; which means that I can't play the CD in my CD-RW drive, but I can play and rip it in my DVD burner. What's really ironic is that it's got the music video on it too; so why use the copy protection that prevents you from being able to put it into your computer? You need to use the computer to access the video!

More on that single. The song is written by "Avril Lavigne / Butch Walker", which means that Butch Walker actually wrote it. But if you look closer into the credits, he also produces it, does backing vocals, plays Bass, Guitar, Keyboards, Percussion and the Synths. Butch Walker is a one-man band!

It's funny because the opening of the song sounds a little like Mylene Farmer. But as much as I dislike Avril's posing and her non-credible attempts to court the rock music community, she does have a distinctive voice and her ballads are pretty good.

But yeah, not much else to say. Oh, I should post my theories of why children's groups are so popular these days; but that's another day and another blog post.

I'm not sure if I just came across a Compiz bug or whether it's that damn generator, but my screen just faded almost completely to white before coming back with a reddish tinge. Strange.

I'm published in APC magazine

Remember when we were having so much trouble getting a replacement TV for a customer, where the TV occasionally wouldn't switch on?

I had written a letter to APC (Australian Personal Computer) Magazine to ask if they could take up the case for us. They did, but they were too late to be effective. (the ACCC had taken up the case and already forced Panasonic to issue us a credit.)

Yesterday I bought the latest issue, and the case was printed in there!

Avico - Finally here

We finally got our long-awaited Avico cables and surge protectors... but my boss only ordered a handful of 1.5m component cables (and no 3 metre ones)! Aye Carumba, we're going to run out again soon!

And we don't seem to have any connectors now, or adapter cables (you know, like "S-video to Composite" or anything like that). Curiously enough, we've got shiteloads of surge protectors, none of which look very sturdy, and all of which are very very cheap. I'm sure Avico makes good cables, but I definitely have reservations about the effectiveness and quality of the surge protectors; and I suppose we will have to see whether they actually do protect anything!

* For those of you who don't know, proper surge protectors come with a connected-equipment warranty up to a certain value. If a power surge gets through the protector and damages the appliances plugged into it, the manufacturer of the surge protector will pay to get all the affected equipment fixed or replaced, as long as the total value doesn't exceed the warranty. The warranty is usually a large number, starting from $25,000 and sometimes going up as high as $100,000. The warranty lasts

A proper surge protector with such a warranty (NOT a Kambrook power board that you bought for $10 from Coles) is an investment that can pay for itself many times over with just a single surge or lightning strike.

He found my internet posts!

Yesterday my boss was searching Google for a particular string of words - the name of our store - and he found a number of posts that I put on Cnet and the Ubuntu Forums. He was surprised and possibly a little shocked, but I think at the same time pleased that I was plugging the shop :-)

Luckily he didn't find this blog, because it has some stuff on it lately that I don't want any of the people I interact with in RL to see.

Unfortunately, this means I'm no longer able to tell you on this blog where it is that I work. Send me a message on Friendster (actually, my Friendster profile probably still says) or listen to the podcast if you want to know.

EDIT: I'm trying to transcode some Hi-5 videos into MPEG-4 using K3B (ffmpeg backend). It's a 29 minute piece of video, and it looks like it's going to take bloody forever on 2-pass encoding. I'm just going to start it again with 1 pass, saving the output to the internal hard disk, and maybe leave it running overnight if necessary. I want to try and delete Windows from my workflow, for when Dell offers the Dellbuntus in Australia; and video capture and encoding is an important part that I need to migrate to Linux.

Oh shit.

I think I just scared off Bianca. She's the girl who I found so much in common with, that I set up 3 buddy pounces just to make sure I'd know when she came online and could start a chat. I asked her for her phone number, and she just said "maybe later now is not a good time" and then immediately went offline.

What's up with this blog lately? It's become more like Twitter, with these short, frequent postings.

Bit depressed again

Sorry, inaccurate title. I'm very depressed again. I have an installation to do in an hour and a half and I would like to call up and cancel, due to me not knowing if I'll spontaneously burst into tears while I'm there. Anything could set me off. I don't have these peoples' phone number and they are nice people, so I can't really cancel / just not show up.

I was okay this morning when I did the podcast, but since then I've darkened. I hope this is a quick install. I'm sorry. I just don't see me having a relationship, and that's what's making me so blue.

Idea for a new Slim Dusty song

Yes, I'm aware that Slim Dusty is gone... but I have an idea for a sequel to his song "A Pub With No Beer", featuring an even more unbelievable occurrance: "A Body-swap story without porn".

It's true. I was feeling a bit... in the mood, and naturally since I don't have a girlfriend I turned to the Internet.

KeithX: Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women.
Keithx: Can women block pop ups for you? No.
Keithx: Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.

Rather than look up pics and vids, and rather than index my own porn collection (it's large and uncatagorised... I have no idea if 20398.mpg is a midget or a threesome) I decided to look up some stories. Somehow I got to a site which has some "body swap" stories - you know, where a boy and a girl swap bodies and go on all sorts of adventures.

I skim-read through one called "Only the strong can forgive". Man, this thing was as long as War And Peace - think it put me over my download allocation for this month - and it featured a boy and a girl who bodyswapped and then couldn't swap back as the boy-who-became-a-girl had his period. A few hours before they were going to swap back, they were involved in a car crash and the girl-who-became