TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

Today, we dug out the trench for the new pipe to go to the cabin at the back for the new solar hot water system.
We managed to get the trench dug out, I thought it’d take most of the weekend to get it right, but after smashing out the concrete with a sledge hammer and [...]

[Read more →]

Now we are committed to the work.
The price jumped from our expectations by another 7500 for the Invisigard security screens we decided we’d stick on.
They seem to be worth the money, rivalling Crimsafe products at a cheaper price, yet using a stronger marine grade stainless steel mesh.
Invisigard seem to have figured out how to keep [...]

[Read more →]

I hit a small problem tonight, I wanted to make it possible for a GreaseMonkey Javascript running on one domain, to publish data to another site using GM_xmlHttpRequest.
The problem was cookies. In order to recognise the person posting, the site requires cookies, and that’s just something XHR can’t manage outright by itself. So, I devised [...]

[Read more →]

I love a good day, when everything falls into place, there’s no real problems / difficulties.
And, after previously deciding to tell CBA to shove it, I’ve since changed my mind and took up a Personal Loan with them for the renovation work. When you consider the discounts we get for bundling all the products, the [...]

[Read more →]

We have some funds in redraw we can put towards the renovations. The new mortgage paperwork arrived today, and I’ve thought about it in detail after seeing the final figures and having some questions raised.
I contacted our Loans rep from RAMS tonight with some questions, particularly around the refinancing figures, and suggesting a Personal Loan [...]

[Read more →]

What lunatics do we have elected in our federal governing body?
I’ve had a look at the Environment Minister’s website tonight after hearing a news article about the Insulation / Hot Water rebate being scrapped.
Immediate disappointment struck as our subsidised, yet, still to be installed system would face a $1600 increase.
My thoughts earlier today were that [...]

[Read more →]

The valuers thought Weathertex would be a better value. I asked my partner to ask the builder whether he would do weathertex, and what it’d come in at. His indication was ‘it would be cheaper’.
The builder operates rather differently to how I’d do it. I like a rough indication, I don’t want him to go [...]

[Read more →]

And the current value is under the previous real estate’s ‘market appraisal’, but then real estate isn’t always consistent.
The valuers claim that for the money we’d outlay, only a 50% increase in value would occur (meaning, we’d be sinking half our money). That makes sense though, my calculations would suggest about half the quote to [...]

[Read more →]

As I previously anticipated, iiNet have won the case against them for copyright infringement, but there’s a very strong chance this case will end up in the High Court – there’s no question AFACT won’t accept this verdict.
So, there will be an appeal, what the grounds for that appeal have some options.
AFACTs counsel made a [...]

[Read more →]

Back in December, I wrote:
Our key obstacle will be getting the hot water to the granny flat. New piping will be needed, and I’m sure it’ll have to be insulated in some way, so that we can remove the one that is out there.
Once we’ve got:
- Recladding
- Windows replaced
- Solar Hot water
- Solar Power
- Rain [...]

[Read more →]

I’m impatient, waiting annoys me.
We had waited weeks for the quotes from the builders to come in, of 4, 2 have so far quoted, and the trend is looking higher than we anticipated. Looking back, my estimates only included rough figures for removal, and raw material costs, so no labour, no other extras that invariably [...]

[Read more →]

I know that’s nothing new, but I’ve noticed it much more lately.
I get the required daily tasks done, then I’m seeking out other things to do – this bit annoys me as I find the lower level stuff really boring, I don’t mind spending a bit of time on a case, and investigating the full [...]

[Read more →]

Some things can be complex and complicated, others simple and obvious.
Approaching the simple and obvious issues is easy, the solutions to them generally present themselves, or take very little consideration. Complex and complicated matters will always deserve careful thought and checking around every corner for what might be the ‘real’ solution, as opposed to a [...]

[Read more →]

We had an assessment of the house done in November, this allowed us to determine where and what we could improve around the house.
As expected, Solar Hot Water was a key recommendation. It was something we were considering eventually anyway, but the shock news came as he found the hot water system on the granny [...]

[Read more →]

After travelling 460KM today, I’ve discovered how annoying a hardware failure can be.
My colocation box is a HP DL360, G3, so it’s not exactly bleeding edge, but it’s a fantastic server, does it’s job and does it reliably.
Last night, we had a planned outage for just a short time to move the box to a [...]

[Read more →]

I was doing the trip to Sydney a short while ago, and as I do, I was listening to the local radio station on hold with Telstra trying to reach someone to resolve an issue with his internet connection.
From his description, sounds like it was a bad username or the modem was faulty, however, he [...]

[Read more →]

I was lurking through “In The News” on whirlpool, which is what I normally do when I can’t find something fun or interesting to fill time, and aside from putting my 25c worth into the ‘poor is poorer’ thread, I found this little item of news from the distributor of all that isn’t newsworthy, news.com.au.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26097791-5007133,00.html
The [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve reset all the stats on Oz VoIP Status, the reason being – we changed colocation provider, the statistics and monitoring since the change has been sooo much better, that it’s unfair to the providers to leave the existing outages in place.
So, I reset them all – everybody is back to 100%. Latency is reset, [...]

[Read more →]

I usually state the importance of backup, and reply to those who lose something ’should have backed up’.
Since the change from Windows to Ubuntu, my email backup has been pretty lax – as in, it’s not a job for cron. I’ll have to work on this soon.
I find the subject to be somewhat true. I’ll [...]

[Read more →]

For a while this afternoon, the wireless network was being used and the user was a victim of an MSN virus – this is easily identified by the links to ‘naked pics of me’ – as if they exist on the internet, I thought my servers were more secure than that (no, there are no [...]

[Read more →]

I was reading a slashdot article ’story’, and I am reminded that Stephen Conroy clearly shouldn’t be doing the job, as he has no idea what he is doing.
the government is said to be watching the case closely and along with attempts to introduce a three-strikes law in Australia, it appears the law will be [...]

[Read more →]

For some time, I was hosting ozvoipstatus.com with Servers Australia.
I moved recently, after they absolutely demonstrated their ignorance and incompetence of a routing issue within their network to the good people at MaxoTel, who also colocate with these idiots in Sydney.
Before the move, I would see intermittent increases in latency, random packet loss, and 8 [...]

[Read more →]

Recently, a provider I colo with had yet another outage, but this was an unusually long and very annoying outage.
They haven’t supplied any ‘reasonable’ explanation for it, so I’ll assume incompetence is the cause and they’ll insert whatever excuse for that will seem plausible.
Anyway, throughout the downtime, I was considering – how could I ensure [...]

[Read more →]

I like a challenge – whatever form it comes.
I’ve got little to do lately, I work, I sit with the kids, I try and force the dollars owing on the house down further.
I try and make work a challenge by finding problems and looking for solutions to those problems, I try and find the more [...]

[Read more →]

I built this system approximately 20 months ago or so (around Nov 2007), and it’s performed great, under both Windows XP Pro, and since December 2008, as my Ubuntu workstation.
It’s performed great, and aside from the few minor issues, such as crashing in suspend (caused by the cx8800 TV tuner driver), and minor software configuration, [...]

[Read more →]

.. so it happened a week or so ago!
The entire process seemed smooth now I look back over it. We selected the place we liked, we went to the bank, had a chat about what’s possible, and then put a deposit on. Building reports came back as expected, no problems there.
Closer to settlement, everything was [...]

[Read more →]

The house we have decided on is progressing settlement.
There has been no hiccups in the process just yet that we couldn’t handle. One of the hiccups was my name, which isn’t a problem for any one but the OSR (who administer the home owners grant) essentially I have 3 names, but I only really use [...]

[Read more →]

When the government does implement the internet filter, which they claim they will use to filter sites containing pretty extraordinary content, you might find a site you wish to view blacklisted. Or not. I have trust in the government enough that they aren’t likely to blacklist any of my sites (or they are really suicidal).
Anyway, [...]

[Read more →]

We took one of the largest pre-settlement steps towards owning the house – we placed the full 10% deposit, and now are awaiting for the settlement time frame to pass.
This leaves us to wait / pack up for 30 days, and prepare to move into our own house.
I’m sort of surprised I didn’t take this [...]

[Read more →]

We’ve identified the house we would like to purchase, it’s a very comfortable price, good location (better than we are now from a comms angle), brick, roomy, large yard.
Now, we’ll have to find the finance. Overwhelming, due to the mass marketing and ‘features’ – but not too difficult with a calculator and full awareness of [...]

[Read more →]