Much of the US, according to the research and facts supplied by Chris demonstrate the US is in piss poor shape, and they have nothing but bad government management and bad fiscal policy to blame (poor savings, poor views, poor review of GDP).

Ignoring the US, I figured let’s have a look what’s happening in our own backyard (I wish it was mine), or more to the point, housing locally.

I can’t finger it. The house prices here are ‘affordable’ - I have previously accepted that house prices are out of reach, but reviewing the current prices for Homes locally, many of them suitable, are within acceptable boundaries for price, and can be paid for in a very acceptable time frame.

My concerns can’t be easily pushed aside. Buying a house isn’t like buying a car. A house is a fixed object, you can’t simply move it elsewhere by fuelling up and hitting the freeway. But, also, life isn’t always meant to be a movable object. I’ve lived a fairly ‘mobile’ life thus far (I am young by the way), travelling up and down the east coast of Australia, and settling the last few years in the local area.

The review, of online prices of the local housing market aren’t easily explained. Housing Affordability in Australia is a ‘key crisis’ noted in the media and even by our own PM. Yet, I look at prices locally and now am ‘emotionally’ convinced of buying.

I don’t always act on emotion, I act more on strategy, on facts and logic, and then finally, I will consider the thoughts, emotions of others and myself. I can make many of these decisions quickly by putting it to a ‘beneficial’ thought process, and in doing so, I can calculate risk and then determine my next move.

I’m stuck here though. Why can I not simply ‘buy’ one of the few houses I can identify? Why am I now considering concrete financial advise from a financial panther on the best move to take with the property market?

A house isn’t a constant fixed asset though - you can always sell and buy elsewhere (selling at a profit intrigues me). Employment is also something to consider. Whilst Management has advised me that there is nothing to worry about, the risk (see Chris Martenson’s videos) is certainly not 0% that my employment will always be solid. Therefore, if I lost employment, we’d have to sell the house and move to ensure survival (as the house would in effect be locked to my employment - without it, the idea is a dream).

The living costs are there, and considered.

The questions that remain:

1. If I were to no longer be employed - I would then need to consider how we can secure accommodation as a result of the lack of employment (or quickly change to an alternate job).

2. If the house wasn’t ideal - and we found ourselves selling for something more suitable, how do we ensure there is a profit, and not a loss?

3. As a young family, the ‘true’ costs of living may not be fully considered - we must consider the costs of ‘now’ and the costs of the future (ignoring any possible further pay rises, because you can’t bank on them).

4. My partner isn’t well informed in this area - I can’t expect a yes or no from her without her also being fully aware of what we’d both be joining into.

Many of the risks I believe present are ‘manageable’ that is, it is not a high liability that we’ll lose our shirts trying to buy a house. In fact, my calculations so far suggest a shirt, and a jumper is easily possible.

What’s happened in the market to cause this ‘drastic’ change? Are sellers being screwed?

I think I’ll locate a ‘non-bank financial planner’ - at the very least, we can pick their brains on how the current situation looks, and why they would believe we ’should’ or ’shouldn’t’ buy a house.

The advantages are clear:
- Buying at a young age means in the future the money won’t be tied up in mortgage repayments and instead will focus towards ‘other expenses’.
- Rent money is ‘dead’ money. It’s a roof for a week, and then it’s rent time again.
- We’ll be creating wealth via an asset (assuming house prices ‘rise’ again).
- House prices are low. They ’shouldn’t’ sink lower, thereby creating a strong asset.

The disadvantages are not so clear:
- We’ll owe ’someone’ or ’something’ money - and for a considerable time.
- We’ll be paying more for something due to Interest Rates

It is tough to explain how the market has come ‘down’ from where it was before, it is tough to predict where it’s going to go - if it’s up, we should be buying now, and either securing a house for ourselves, or even considering selling a house to take advantage of the high housing prices should they ever eventuate.

I must consider what a financial planner can tell me that isn’t clear already. If anything, it’d be good to bounce ideas and thoughts off one, and confirm previous and future plans as they are currently.

I believe I do this well. I also believe I am employed in a job that is not a match for my skillset - but that’s another story. It doesn’t concern me that I am not using all my skills as such, it doesn’t make the day fun, but I still do a quality job where I can.

I find myself (not necessarily this position though), delivering the best performance I can for employers, and strangely, my ‘best performance’ outweighs that of others by exceptional percentages. It’s not entirely explainable though - I have different work methods, different work flow choices, and perhaps even stronger work ethic than those that watch YouTube throughout the workday.

The tough economic climate means that it’s not the best time to ask for a pay rise, no company is going to simply give a ‘blind-yes’ to a pay rise in these times without strong consideration for the employee, the company, and the end result.

I imagine that the forecast for the future, for my position alone will be bought into question, and then consider the value of replacing me with someone else. Asking for a pay rise isn’t a simple “I want more money”.

I get the idea that it is going to require analysis of the work that I perform, and how long it would take to train other employees to do the same task (employees, because I can find my own performance can be at least twice that of another).

I placed a great deal of thought into it, I didn’t want to ask and annoy upper management - any request for money is likely to not be seen ‘lightly’ - but, bricks and land cost money. Building a house costs money (I hope to someday). Savings is not at higher interest rates anymore. That’s ‘a plan’ for the additional income from the pay rise. But it also begs to question, why get paid less, if others are being rewarded for performance which is not of the same quality / quantity? It’s an uneasy thought, that continually leaves you considering ‘why’!

I did indeed seek alternative employment, to better match my skillset, but I currently don’t see the need to ‘let down’ / ‘disappoint’ the current organisation. I took a holiday recently, and came back to something ‘extreme’ as a result of a short stay away. This point is something that I consider a ‘key’ item to my value, as such activity had not occurred previously in my time with the company, evidence that I contribute a substantial amount!

Part of asking for a pay increase is the careful wording of the request - I spent a fair amount of time considering the wording. I know that upper management will easily see through a letter taken off some random site, and should easily see through a request for a pay rise on unwarranted terms - further instilling confidence that they aren’t as likely to bluntly say no.

I’m not asking for an extreme amount - actually, I didn’t specify an amount at all - I feel they may in fact be able to align my pay rate with performance rather easily - by taking the pay rate of others doing similar tasks, and finding a percentage point that best matches the work output. Basic logic would suggest to double it - but I would easily reject such an offer, because the position isn’t worth ‘double’ - they could have me 24 / 7 for ‘double’! - I think it’s simply finding a point that they believe reflects the performance.

I of course, do have a figure in mind, it’s only a relatively small increase percentage wise - but leaving the figure out gives oppourtunity for discussion between us, if they have no figure they can settle on, ask. I know, given a similar email, I would probably suggest a figure and if this wasn’t acceptable request what they would like.

But, we also arise at the question of career advancement - where will I eventually go? Eventually, I will want to take advantage of the skills I have. The company I work for can utilise the skills, but not in my current capacity. It’s not an urgent pressing topic, because I’m getting really comfortable where I am!

It’s an intriging and interesting wait - considering I do have a great deal of respect for the management of the company!

Enjoy, hopefully I will too!

I use a realtime implementation to allow for easy addition of users and to have the data I want in MySQL (makes it easier to monitor activity in CDR, etc). The problem recently was as a result of an upgrade, there appears to be changing to Asterisk’s debug log. Previously, Asterisk debug output would end up in the full log.

This made it easy to review the traces of an issue being experienced, and follow them back to the source - the log would simply contain the full sequence of issues leading up to the ‘issue’, and what happened after.

The newer version of asterisk however doesn’t enable debugging unless the startup option ‘-d’ is specified. safe_asterisk restarts asterisk in the event it bombs out - and one has to admit - crashing doesn’t happen often with asterisk, it’s ‘reliable’.

So, whilst I was reading the log, I was seeing messages such as:
” res_config_mysql.c: MySQL RealTime: Failed to query database. Check debug for more info.”

That’s a nice warning, it tells me to find the source of the issue, check into asterisk debug log. So we open the seperate file appointed to debug (it removes clutter), and it’s empty.

So, I look into the asterisk configuration file - is debug enabled? Of course it is. Spelt correctly? Yep. Where’s the debug - how can you debug a bug without debug?

I check Asterisk ‘logger show channels’ - this is described to show logging channels.

Sure enough, there is a line that states my ‘debug’ log is of “File” type, and is “Enabled” and is configured to be “Debug”. Asterisk isn’t doing anything wrong there.

Then I look into ‘help’ - core set debug. Could it really be, asterisk requires the debug option to be set? It does. You can set it there, or alternatively, you can have it enabled on startup in using safe_asterisk.

In the safe_asterisk script (nano -w /usr/sbin/safe_asterisk) - find “ASTARGS” and edit it to include a “-d” - this enables asterisk debugging information to a log file, by default, asterisk doesn’t log debug information.

This is confusing. The problem turns out that real-time now has an additional field required - ‘regserver’, adding that field seems to have caused asterisk to stop spewing the error message.

The issue may be ‘better’ managed by asterisk real time mysql having a seperate SQL based log for any errors it experiences. In a production system, you might not have so many errors.

Although, another point to note is the mysql realtime module is very chatty:
 res_config_mysql.c: MySQL RealTime: Connection okay.
res_config_mysql.c: MySQL RealTime: Retrieve SQL: SELECT * FROM sip_buddies WHERE name = ”
res_config_mysql.c: MySQL RealTime: Connection okay.
res_config_mysql.c: MySQL RealTime: Retrieve SQL: SELECT * FROM sip_buddies WHERE name = ” AND host = ‘dynamic’
res_config_mysql.c: MySQL RealTime: Connection okay.
This query might return no results, so it begs to question why is it even executed?

Enjoy!

Previously, you had to turn it off for peers stuck behind NAT, this is resolved in newer versions of Asterisk which attempt to determine if a peer is behind NAT, or if the peer is connectable.

The method is simple, for the peers affected or unsure, set the canreinvite option to ‘nonat’ - this will cause the audio to be connected directly to the peer if possible, otherwise, it will packet2packet bridge the audio.

It is important to have the right mix of codecs on the server and specified in the ATA settings also - without it, you’ll just have a mess to sort out.

NAT is a big problem for VoIP - nearly every gateway / router will implement NAT differently from what I have been told. The BEST configuration is to have the ports forwarded. This isn’t hard for many people - it’s just a matter of finding what your router calls it, and then forward the ports. Once the ports are forwarded, there should be only codec mismatches to worry about - and of course, if your codecs are specified right - well, there is no problem - the audio should be connected directly, rather than bridged.

Asterisk 1.4 and 1.6 have had many advancements to SIP and RTP implementation. T.38 support is at a strong point now - not completely tested by me, however with T.38 support, it greatly reduces the errors you may experience trying to transmit fax over ulaw / alaw.

Check out the UPGRADE.txt for Asterisk 1.6 - the list is massive and impressive.
Enjoy!

One of the key features I took advantage of is the context option for each SIP peer. It is possible to exclude one group of users from calling another group by using contexts.

Let’s say I want user 300 to never be able to call two users, 400 and 420. 420 and 400 can call each other, and call 300. User 300 is simply someone who will get bullied by 400 & 420, but won’t be able to get back at them.

This is accomplished easily through the use of extensions and SIP peer contexts.

I set the context for 300 to ‘victim’. I set the context for 400 and 420 to ‘attack’.

Then, in extensions.conf I create the appropriate configurations.

[victim]
exten => _310X.,1,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN})
exten => _310X.,n,Hangup

[attack]
exten => _4X.,1,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN})
exten => _4X.,n,Hangup
exten => _3X.,n,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN})
exten => _3X.,n,Hangup

The sip configuration for each is similar to the below:
[310]
type=friend
username=310
secret=yamomma
allow=all
context=victim

[400]
type=friend
username=400
secret=md5
allow=all
context=attack

[420]
type=friend
username=420
secret=secret
allow=all
context=attack

Try as 310 might, there is no way they can call via the system to 400, however, 400 and 420 can ring 310 as often as they wish.

You can of course add the 4X route to the extensions, and playback a message to the user.

This method can be used to restrict calls to certain areas, such as 1900, or international numbers. It can also be used as a call control method, in the event you don’t want a specific extension calling someone.

It is important to have a peer and user definition. After upgrading to Asterisk 1.6.0 on my test server, I found my test development server (used for simulation) running Trixbox 1.1 (yep, ancient crap), would not accept calls.

I upgraded to 1.4.22 on the test development server, and found the same issue. This was resolved by changing the sip definitions used for interserver communication to be ‘friend’ type, rather than ‘user’ type that appears to have been automatically created by Trixbox - no longer used.

Oh well, back to enjoying a long weekend here in NSW. Another day for me to experiment some more and try and push forward with the updates planned for OzVoIPStatus!

Speaking of OzVoIPStatus - one of the areas I’m having difficulties enhancing is the method in which providers may specify plan data - some have included calls, others have none. Some have unlimited calls, and others have untimed call rates. It’s not so much a difficulty designing this - it’s more in the way of presentation on the page.

Enjoy!

I understand that theory very well. It’s never easy to pick when your faced with two people who may be able to deliver the same. It can come down to money, or on the other hand, experience.

I don’t think I aimed high for the position, in fact, I thought I aimed to be the ‘lowest’ bidder, because changing jobs wasn’t about the money, but rather, finding a job I was ‘happy’ with.

The decision means that I will need to remain in my current position, and either wait for advancement oppourtunities to get away from frontline inventory, or continue to monitor the various locations to locate a more suitable position.

I personally believe I am at an age, whereby it would be expected to have a career plan, and that plan is put in place in terms of previous employment on the resume (not necessarily previous employment, but rather, having that job in place on the resume, will make it easier to get a job in the same arena).

I no longer enjoy customer support, maybe this is due to the different experience and context that I am supplying support - the previous customer support roles have been in positions where I have seen the results of providing quality support. The current position, no matter how good quality I supply, or how high the quantity, the end result will always be ‘crap’.

The above is simply because there is no “I” in team, and many of the setbacks come from knowledge of the previous advertised positions filled by others, and knowledge of the workflow, and ummmm quality.. produced by others. There’s no incentive for me to perform better then those who are paid more, and whilst not absolutely certain, even if I was paid more, I doubt there’d be a lot I could do to increase the appearance of the support supplied.

I do regularly get at the moment, that I am the most helpful person they have spoken to, after of course, 6 or 7 calls. I’d publish case studies, but I’m not keen on identifying or shaming anyone. I simply cannot perform where the others around are continuously ‘undoing’ and ‘reversing’ the service level quality.

So, here I am, back in the corner, answering the calls, assisting the n00bs, resolving the real issues, and fixing the fuckups - tho I try not to now, I think that if I don’t sort them, then it’s someone elses problem to find and fix.

I’m still pushing forward on my own personal projects, but the measurable results of those are reduced due to the time consumption involved in supplying the resolutions, and assisting the n00bs. Though, the equation of ‘personal projects’ requires ‘personal income’ - this is of course reliant on the fact that I am outputting assistance and resolutions.

The new year may look a little more interesting. I might even get time to have a holiday this year for the first time in.. 4 years. That’ll be interesting with a child, should be fun.

Back in the corner.
Enjoy.

Then, after a short week wait, a response. It’s not a disappointing reply, but it’s not successful just yet.

I made the short list for the second round of interviews, which being very soon now, to me looks like they have a tough decision, and they are looking to exclude candidates.

Knowledge is what allows us to strategically position ourselves to suit the requirements and acheieve the goal, in this case, to be successful for the application.

There is not a lot of knowledge available, we know the company, we know the current exploits on their website (well, maybe they don’t), we know of some of the bugs, we know of what the current users experience, and we know a little about the company structure.

What we don’t know is the other candidates - what do they have to choose between? That’s something I don’t know, which of course, makes selling yourself, a simpler process. They are doing the comparisons, I’ve simply got to demonstrate what they are looking for in a new employee, can be found with me.

The previous interview went for a good 45 minutes. I’ve set another hour aside for this interview, to allow plenty of time for a good solid discussion. I feel confident in my abilities to fulfill many of the tasks they are asking of the right candidate. I can administer servers and perform preventative maintenance, I can optimise code and ensure a positive user experience. I can contribute to discussions, and design to meet objectives. I can create new applications, and optimise what is already there.

But, I imagine so can a few others. The average pay rate for the position is around $55k per annum. I’ve gone for a figure lower than this, because it’s my ‘first’ employed position in the area, and at the moment, I’m keen to get away from the support scene.

I’ve put a fair bit of thought into it, sure, I can support users day in, day out. But the frustration comes when it is something so simple: Have you actually read the quick start guide?

Or, when someone calls, for something that can be resolved by email and thought out in detail, rather than over the phone.

Or, when someone has an unsupported setup, and calls in expecting immediate support for such a setup. I don’t have 1 hour to spend on the phone helping you do the job of a technician, it’s not fair to those who have genuine issues that WE do need to resolve.

I don’t like phones, despite my interests in VoIP, telephones annoy me. They ring, they get answered, and you just think: “Who the f@#k dare disturb me answering this email.”. This of course means the person on the other end of the phone may not be greeted by the most happy sales person (luckily I don’t answer Sales enquiries anymore). I like to get to the chase, find out what the problem is, give them some troubleshooting, and tell them to go away, so I can assist those who thought patience was ideal, and used email.

Many of those issues just won’t be present in the new job - it’s for an online website, and one which doesn’t actually have a phone number - bonus. There isn’t a strong support aspect in the job, much of it is simply creating applications to meet design specifications, maintaining services, and improving the code base (from what I’ve been told isn’t the greatest).

The site itself employs a fantastic array of AJAX, and therefore shouldn’t be a load nightmare to manage. There are many database optimisations I can put in place, and I’ve identified a few pages I’d like to view the code of, and see how they are currently doing that.

I’m aware of a few security related issues on the server, and part of me thinks - If I tell them, they may see it as a negative, that I would be using it to simply get the job, on the other, they may think it is a positive - I’ve researched the site thoroughly and already found a few exploits. I’m going with the safer route at the moment, I very much want this job, so I’m going to try and sell my abilities to them, and simply not advise of what I am aware of. I’ll just remember to fix them when I start in the position.

Hopefully, the interview can be easily cleared, and I make the number 1 spot on the shortlist, and blow the rest of the candidates out of the water.

Still on the edge of my seat.

There are key differences to consider however, without even thinking of the pay rates or hours.

The current position:
- Is a client support position, meaning I ask the same questions and advise many of the same people the same things day in, day out.
- Is a busy position, many phone calls of support and sales nature, emails and follow up are needed in a day to assist in resolution of issues.
- Is boring.

The position is better than others in the same sort of industry and field in that when someone is asking for support, they generally need it - though a large percentage that do ask for it could solve the problem themselves. The pay is good, the job is work from home, meaning there’s no travel time wasted.

On an ongoing basis however, in order to complete the overdue tasks that I have assigned, it requires some overtime from time to time, therefore a 40 hour week can easily transition into a larger week on a regular basis.

The company is adding extra services from a different nation, where such support staff is approximately 1 to 4 (or even more). Simply, as an Australian support consultant, I couldn’t possibly compete with the wages. From a financial point of view, if I were the company owner, I would consider not continuing the employment of the Australian staff. However, there is one issue that would prevent taking out the Australian support staff, being that the staff in the other nation don’t always get the right response or right solution to the ‘obvious’ problems. Sure, Australian staff have similar issues, but the accuracy rate is far more accurate (however, I only have a top level overview of that to base that comment off).

The new job:
- is a role in systems administration and development.
- is expected to be far more interesting compared to support.
- is for a local company, so travel time, whilst required, is not far out of the question.
- has better hours compared to the current role.

Assuming I am successful for the upcoming interview, I’ve got a choice, a gambling decision if you will, of taking the new role and putting faith into the role being a successful position with a company that has been around for some time.

I’ve heard a rumour that the company I am currently with has never sacked anyone, and has plans for all staff in Australia - those plans do not obviously have a strong indication of ‘what that is’ - without knowing that, I have to gamble on what ‘plans they could have’ perhaps being more suitable for me.

I’m burnt out on support. I simply cannot tolerate supporting other people’s problems. I used to enjoy it, but I’ve been doing that for 4 years between a few different companies - the first role of support was fun, I enjoyed the company I worked for and helping wherever I could to make it grow.

The current company is a larger company, but still in business for a similar length of time, the company has more staff, and I don’t really care if it grows. I don’t like Sales, yet I’m forced to provide sales support to customers, that said, at the previous company, I’d have happily supplied Sales, Support and Faults advice all in the same hour.

I’m not happy in my current role, and with the imminent completion of the support services in the other nation, I’m not too sure what plans they have for me, and whether those plans will satisfy my desire to develop, rather than support.

I enjoy working from home - I don’t really care if it requires extra hours, but because I’ve always got access to family if I want to, and there’s no time lost in travel. But, if working from home is simply going to mean I continue working in a role that is not satisfying, then it’s probably best I do look at what else is available in the interests of personal happiness.

Working away from home - offers more advancement - the new role will be a true employment role in the area I enjoy, Systems Administration and Development. Having this role on my resume could assist further in advancing my career as opposed to simply having a company with a relatively big name on the resume.

I’ve got a big decision to make soon if I’m successful after interview, and that decision is likely to be unaffected even if the pay rate was lower.

I know of another individual in the company I currently work for, who joined a role shortly after I did, who gets in the order of 10K a year more than me, yet on many occasions I cross this persons work in the course of my duties and wonder - ‘What the fuck were you thinking?’ - which adds more disappointment, another person gets paid more, to do the same job with poor quality.

There doesn’t appear to be much in the way of quality performance reviews done at the current company, meaning that this person could go on for an infinite amount of time, being paid significantly more, and from crossing paths with the activities they do, they do a poor job of it.

I’ll see what the interview holds and check out the pros and cons of it, but from the outset, the newer position looks more and more juicy by the minute.

Much of the items are as I described several months ago, mindless paperwork describing something that you have done countless times already - but of course, in this day and age, certification is not always just a bit of paper.

From an employment perspective it can show someone’s desires, what they felt motivated enough to complete on their own. It can also highlight educational aspects - how well someone can learn.

The Diploma in IT for me is a bit of a resume filler - to sit alongside my Cert I, II, III & IV studies and effectively leaves me open to the Advanced Diploma, or to follow more specific studies.

The Cisco Certified Network Administrator course has been a course that has found itself in front of my eyes many times - not the course, but rather the term CCNA. I had not considered proceeding a full path in networking, mainly because I know what I want, and can always find and work out what I don’t.

My ideal career path is one which focuses on development - Client Support is a fair way off from that, but it’s more of a stop gap measure to keep everything going and of course, add to the resume.

I’m not entirely sure where I’ll find myself with development - be it web or system related - within the next 3 years. I’m not anticipating remaining in Client Support for that long, it’s boring. I’m a problem solver, sure. I like to resolve issues, but of course, exposure to new issues makes it all the more interesting.

Client Support lacks the aspects I enjoy, the ability to replicate an issue, and fix it. Nearly all the issues I get faced with are the same old, same old. Restart, and viola, it’s fixed, or adjust configuration setting, and it’s fixed. It’s uninteresting, boring.

A problem solving challenge would be a new issue, a new investigation, a new solution, rather than repeating the same troubleshooting with the next caller (dependant on issue).

I had/have plans to push forward with a development business, but that isn’t taking off as well as it could be. I’m not a good marketer - when I review other attempts made by me, I do realise that.

Marketing Reps are expensive, and not something that can be afforded from a startup, word of mouth first requires mouths to give word out of. A telephone directory ad would just create phone calls - I can’t stress enough how much I dislike a telephone (yes, despite my large usage of SIP / VoIP when developing OzVoIPStatus).

Thinking of marketing, I’m reminded of that ‘thatradiobloke.com’ advertisement, which makes sense - create a catchy advert and entice the listener to review the website to get the full details. Websites of course offer a LOT of information, more than a 30 second radio ad can convey (not every case applies, stupid flash splash pages for example).

So, back to where I was - where do I see myself in proceeding with Development? I could continue to try and follow up on creating a development company, and provide solutions to problems faced by IT users. What can I gain from Client Support? Patience and tolerance for the telephone, and the slow paced users on the other end. Not something I want much anyway.

What will my Diploma get me? Not a lot at the moment I imagine, but the future can hold many oppourtunities, so it’s important to keep doors open and ensure I have the capabilities to be dynamic (and have a dynamic, but extensive skillset). IT is a dynamic marketplace as well, new technologies replacing old (and I’ve used Windows Vista an approximate total of 1 - 2 hours).

I enjoy solving problems with programs, and creating solutions to IT problems, it’s ‘fun’.

I have just completed an accounting tool that I have been pushing through for a friend recently to assist with online data.

It uses Quickbooks, and interfaces a lot of his data with that provided by customers - all in the lead up to something bigger to happen later on.

But, as I go through all the bug fixes, and complete all the features and see the application form from a simple blank line of code to what is now.. 1006 lines of code, which helps with performing the tasks required in a very efficient manner - it saves on manual entry, I feel somewhat rewarded from the effort that has gone into it.

Sometimes it isn’t money that is the reward, but rather, seeing the completion of a development. 

I enjoy developing, and that’s in the full sense of the term, from theoretical, through to the stages of development, information flow, and programming, and then UI design. It excites me, and then you find the feeling of accomplishment at the end, after you have pushed through all the issues, and made something from - nearly - nothing, and of course, it works. Naturally, no item of software is bug free - even Notepad has a bug, but development and testing show this is pretty well completed - I test a lot of code as I go, to ensure bugs are identified quickly. It slows development ’slightly’, because if you get it right, then you are wasting marginal amounts of time testing to ensure perfection, but, then, if you later have to dig through the code to identify your bug, then  you’ll be in a different mindset and stuck reading through the code.

I guess that might somewhat apply to open source as well, when you have multiple developers, they’ll have to read through another developers code and wonder ‘what on earth was he thinking there’ - naturally, typos, and logic errrors - or in the case of phones - train of thought interuptions can cause errors!

I’m still feeling happy with the completion of that, because it now signifies the possible start of the next stage, which is more web based, and I enjoy web development the most (yes, ignore OzVoIPStatus, it isn’t exactly the most developped website I have).

Oh, some - like Sydney - may be wondering where my views on Telstra, Optus, “Fox” Terria, the G9, and Broadband are. Currently, I’m avoiding those topics for a little bit, I have the new job to keep with, TAFE studies, and where I can fit items in, development - if only I could turn that into a full time, well paid job like my client support job.

Enjoy!

The car below, is a clear example of the same idiot who has no idea of how to park. The first failure is to park within 50cm of the kerb - he may as well as park out in the traffic.

Our driveway, with the same car from previous weeks and months blocking approach.

As you can see, greater than 50% of the car is completely blocking our driveway.

Then, earlier, there’s a 90kM/hr stretch of road near us, and I was cruising down that road, and there was a C4WD - C, cause it’s never touched dirt, who was tailgating me at 90. So I slam on the brakes to simulate what would happen if there was a fuckhead up ahead - it is NSW, fuckheads are aplenty - and he starts getting pissed off that I slam the brakes on to demonstrate he was following too closely.

He then comes across a roundabout, and doesn’t indicate to turn right, either.

NSW has to have some of the stupidest people on the roads.

That said, the reason why our speeds on our roads are lower than those of other nations? The drivers on our roads wouldn’t stand a chance if they were faced with conditions such as Germany’s AutoBahn, or other high speed circuits. The speed limits are for many of the users own good, because they clearly can’t look after their own self and maintain a safe following distance, indicate intended direction of travel - or even park a car.

They are stupid. Yet, they are in control of a > 500KG machine capable of inflicting serious injury in their own incapable hands. I sort of think of arranging it to be towed away, just to make an example, but the person who drives it is an old fart, who probably is demented, and we’d just be making an episode of “Dude, where’s my car - Old Fart Edition”.

The accounting application used is one of the known brands of accounting applications - there’s only two in Aus, and it’s not MYOB.

The company who develops or on-sells this international application to Australian users has it’s international version SDKs - pretty much a requirement for developping targetted applications to interoperate with their software - the SDK for US, UK, CA, and Online are available freely, online. Register, download a file, install it, SDK access in your browser in just moments.

The Australian version however, doesn’t differ significantly from the US and UK versions, with one exception. Tax. There is a feature built into the application to allow for a transaction to be entered as amounts ‘include’ tax, or, if not ticked / or in SDK terms ’specified’ - then it assumes it isn’t tax inclusive and adds tax.

So, I dug through the SDK, found a “IsTaxIncluded” option related to non US versions - sweet, plug that option in, run an import and we should have tax inclusive accounting - it’d make it presented better when they are ‘printed’.

That didn’t work, the result from my XML request was a rather standard reply, showing it successfully took my request, processed it, and in my request, I specified “IsTaxIncluded” with a true parameter.

In the result, I read through, saw that it had added tax, and it simply ignored my “IsTaxIncluded” parameter. I’ve looked at the SDK information for what I am importing, and if I was running the UK version or the CA version, this would probably work without question, tax included.

The problem with the Australian version is the company that distributes in Australia charges $1999 to register as a developer, and the API is available, for a fee of $199, or the SDK for $499.

Interesting, I want to develop a rather small application that will simply interoperate with this companies bulk, slow processing peice of junk - and they want to rip my wallet out for $500 to provide only SDK access so I can see if there is a feature that can do it. Of course, I’m not going to pay that to see if such a TaxIncluded feature is on offer in their new SDK. Get stuffed. Why would I pay for information that the parent or development company provides freely for all other international versions, and the Australian company are simply stifling the development options?

I understand businesses are in business to make money, but fair dinkum, this company really don’t want to encourage users to take up their offering, there are alternatives which simply don’t require outlays of funds to do such a simple task.

It’d be OK to charge for SDK if they exposed the object via a query for a specific item- so let’s say I pushed through a query with a “Describe” option, it would give me back XML with all possible properties that can be set for that specific transaction - but nope - empty.

Even more so, this same company offers an Idiot Interchange File format (IIF). The file format has to be one of the worst. It’d have been easier to offer XML as an IMPORT method rather than work on a file format which has many, many flaws and restrictions.

Anyway, what’s happened in the broadband world? I’ve been able to keep a good pulse on that.

The federal government decided to can the OPEL project. Great, screw regional australians even further and become a lapdog to Telstra. One might wonder what the value of the kickbacks received by Conroy totals, he did seem to spend a lot of time finding an exit strategy. Perhaps the cheque might have just been clearing. Maybe not.

The Internet Filtering proposed by the idiot is still proposed to continue, despite recent news that the governments own departments have been subject to filtering and some are actually complaining about it being too strict. But, obviously not strict enough to remove it completely from the agenda.

I did read the news at whirlpool and came across a link to a protest site, which suggested an email, brilliant idea, they even included a template, reading the template, it didn’t seem to describe the hypocritical nature of the plan, so I rewrote it, ensuring I made very clear the hypocrisy of rolling out an FTTN network, only to slow it back down by filtering it - why not maintain the current situation and simply encourage private investment in FTTN and private investment in internet filtering technologies - if a company wants to filter the internet experience for their customers, then the parents who are too stupid or insane to monitor their children using such a violent, sexual, disturbing, informative, and educational medium such as the Internet, or are too cheap to cough up for a filter and some accurate computer security, can then sign with that company. The taxpayer isn’t a bloody babysitter.

My email to Silly Stephen suggested that as well. There’s no room in everyone elses budget to babysit someone elses internet experience. At all. There’s no room in everyone elses budget to pay more for internet access to facilitate that crap as well. You want your kids protected? You pay for it. Not me, not Sydney Lawrence, not Telstra, not Optus, or any other taxpaying Australian. Nope. You pay for it.

A recent comment suggested the TomTom might have lead me astray, actually, that comment isn’t far from the truth, the TomTom did at one point actually try to send me up a wrong road in the local area.

I’ve taken time recently experimenting with Cisco devices, and VPN. I actually took that and tried to make that work on Linksys equipment, and it took a few long weekends, but I did actually manage to make it work. It only works in a specific configuration on Linksys devices. R

I find myself looking at the things I do, and questioning if it is an efficient use of time. I previously went through as much as our house as I could, and looked at what energy usage was occurring, and looked for as many cost effective efficiencies that I could find.

This saw us purchase a new fridge, for example, because the payback time is short enough, and the efficiency is improved. It’s faster at cooling, uses less electricity, and will pay for itself inside it’s expected life (10 years).

Then you have the time based efficiency. I look at the activity I am presently doing, and determine, is this an efficient use of my time, is there anything that could be done to get me the information I desire, quicker, so that the time isn’t used on looking at existing information. Yep, Google isn’t exactly the best search engine, because they are yet to give an ‘efficient’ query. Finding the exact information, whilst removing all the information I already know, or don’t ‘want’ to know.

I don’t exactly take short cuts if I can avoid them, because a job done well is a job well done, but, I’ll try and trim the fat off a process if possible.

I recall at a previous place of employment, we used to look up stock codes in an excel spreadsheet. Highly inefficient, as the user had to filter through all the information, to find what they wanted.

I created a database, and tapped an asp page, and used some javascript in that scenario to make finding product details, and suppliers a very quick, ‘efficient’ process. I just don’t like to see something take longer than it should. Heck, if I could, I’d hang up a phone call quicker because someone is babbling on needlessly and won’t get to the point - I don’t, because it is rude, but, if it wasn’t rude, I’d definitely hang up. It’s a waste of time listening to someone babble on about how their son ‘Joe’ has done this and that. I don’t really give a shit, just tell me what you want ME for.

That’s what I do, I like to find the fastest path through something, naturally, fast isn’t always accurate, but, if a combination of fast and accurate can be found, then, there isn’t much harm in trying to ensure an efficient use of time / resources.

This brings me to the next point. I took the car through the car wash today, wash all the dust off it. I think they use reclaimed water at that car wash, and I think that’s a great way to ensure the reuse of a item, but, the clean isn’t exactly accurate, leaving a bit of crap on the car still, and I can imagine a fair bit of water wasn’t actually used on the car, thereby being wasted.

This is related to a new job I have taken with a prominent Australian company.

I’ve found working there to be an absolute pleasure. The trips to Sydney this week were good, the pain of being stuck at 90KM/h is a real pain on long trips like to Sydney and back. I think they should really do away with speed limits on such licences on Freeway conditions where fatigue might be more of a danger than a ‘Provisional’ driver doing 110KM/h.

I definitely want to get a car with cruise control, if I ever find myself doing long trips. The constant feeding of fuel to the car becomes a bit tiring on a long drive.

The TomTom GPS, works good. It does have a few issues though, for example, travelling along the Freeway at North Sydney, I found it was beeping at me for speeding in a loud manner when I was infact doing 80. It thought the limit was 60. You can never rely 100% on technology.

The job realises a lot of my skills in networking, and was put through a test today when I assisted a user to network an ADSL modem to a router, and join his network to that.

Why do I do that? Well, when a user gets something working from the help they get from you, and they are thankful for it, it’s a good achievement. The user learns a little something new, something you consider simple has benefited someone else greatly, and the user is happier as a result of it.

One of the big annoyances on the trip home were trucks really. Not that they were annoying, but rather they would overtake, and of course, a hill up ahead sees them barely pushing 40. I can climb a hill at 90, so why would they overtake! But, even more annoying were the numbers of people who think a lane change involves nothing else but a quick flick of the indicator, turn it off, and just .. change lane. Hey. Who cares if the person on the other side can’t realise what you are doing.. Stupid people.

The job, again, great job. I get to do it from home now, which means no more waking up early to zoom down to Sydney and get to work half an hour early.

Another item I noticed, in North Sydney. A 1 hour lunch break. Sweet. I get 1 hour to do whatever I want with. Early bird parking means I can’t take the car anywhere, so I have to use that 1 hour in North Sydney. Hmmm.. Nope. Not a lot can be done with 1 hour in North Sydney. Personal opinion? Lose the 1 hour lunch break. Probably not the popular opinion though!

I believe I’ll be a efficient, productive asset to the new company I work for. I’ve been very excited since, well, weeks before I started the job, and still am excited, even after working the first week already.

I won’t name names, I have a simple reason for this, to maintain my own privacy. It’s a good company though, one which has shown itself to grow continuously, and rivals other larger companies. It is an absolute pleasure to be working with this specific company, a very enjoyable company to work for. No, it isn’t Google.

Enjoy!

I suppose they might be confusing the ACCC with the TIO, where the TIO collects fees for those who complain about services delivered, the ACCC on the other hand, does not.

The ACCC doesn’t actually do much in the way of what a common ‘god’ would do, for example, the ACCC doesn’t ‘lead’, they merely only enforce what government leaders set out. And of course, government leaders are elected by the people, so the people choose the government, who writes the laws that the ACCC are tasked to enforce.

If they were god, they’d be writing the rules, choosing any elected ‘leaders’, and well, there’d be no need for a court, afterall, Graeme is god. Skip the court process, just ask the boss, who is god, to get your orders made.

The question begins, if Graeme Samuel is god, ie. ‘The saviour of humans’, is Telstra the devil? What about the impasse last year between the ACCC’s Graeme Samuel , Telstra’s CEO Sol Trujillo, and the Minister for Communications Helen Coonan. Graeme is god, so that means that Sol is the devil, so what about Helen Coonan? Does she sit in the middle choosing between God and The Devil, afterall, she is the voice of the people, the people elected her, so perhaps that is more fitting.

Sol, the devil, doesn’t like God’s choice of consumer protection. Helen Coonan, being the woman in the middle must choose between God or The Devil, and well, I think people prefer to have a ‘heaven’ environment, rather than one ‘filled with hell’.

Think about it, would you rather be billed for a service in a heavenly fashion, or receive bills from hell?

I guess this gives new meaning to the long running term: “Hellstra”, a common term used to describe Telstra on forums like Whirlpool after customers have many times been frustrated with large bills and charged incorrectly, or simply telemarketed.

Hellstra is now ran by The Devil, and God doesn’t like The Devil’s price, so God has set about enforcing the laws that are dictated by the members of public through their vote for the Minister for Communications.

They just need to rebrand the site, some devil ears coming out of the Telstra logo, change the blue for a red finish, add a flames effect, and demonise the NextG combi, and I think Telstra will have set a more accurate impression of themselves, espiecially with comments like ” I thought he was God. He certainly behaves like it”, published in The Australian.

On that note though, of course the above, with exception to certain clear facts is only published in jest, intended to be a joke, not to offend. Hope you found it partly amusing, yet eye opening at just who exactly runs Telstra, and where exactly a Telstra Bill comes from.

Enjoy!

It wasn’t anything overly expensive, but I get annoyed when someone is paid for something and they do not deliver.

So, I lodged a complaint with paypal, that the seller didn’t actually deliver the intangible item, and there was no evidence of any attempt to deliver, the mail server logs prove it.

In my dispute opening with the seller, I advised that he should instead post the intangible item to PayPal, or a copy of the initial email to prove that he indeed did provide the item purchased in the manner requested.

The seller didn’t even refer to me via my correct name, and referred to someone with a different surname.

I escalated the claim for review with PayPal, mentioning, if he did indeed have this intangible item, he should indeed post the item to the complaint process, so we can see he did indeed deliver it, and leave the dispute at that.

He didn’t do that, and what’s worse? PayPal find in favour of his sorry ass.

This has to be the weirdest scam yet. Offer something intangible for sale, don’t really need to deliver on it, when the complaint is made, stay silent, PayPal find in your favour because they don’t bother investigating anything intangible. Nope, don’t even go as far as making the seller prove they delivered it, or require delivery of the item in the dispute process.

And of course, they don’t refund if the seller doesn’t deliver.

It’s disappointing, because the item, being a simple ‘code’ could easily have been provided to the PayPal process if he did indeed have it. Heck, if the code didn’t work, OK, my fault for buying, but, he didn’t deliver at ALL! Nothing at all came from him, and he gets to keep the funds.

I’m contemplating finding a way to get a chargeback put forth for the transaction, because it is really just stupid of PayPal to be siding with the seller for their own profits in the case. They should be able to easily see what was purchased was able to be provided through the dispute process, the fact he didn’t provide it when asked, suggests that he didn’t have it to start with, and that to me would warrant the refund unless they could prove they delivered the item by alternative means.

The owner of the product is apparently Japanese, so I’ve decided to kick a few stones over in that direction and see what comes of it, don’t really hold much hope though. It looks to be the antics of a scammer, relying on PayPal’s intangible item policy to protect him from having to deliver on the purchase.

That’s easily worked around, you only get so many strikes before they’ll suspect something is astray and suspend the account and terminate the membership. That should learn him.

Enjoy!

VDSL2+ doesn’t really seem to have a place however for home users, because the performance from the internet isn’t likely to reach the speeds capable of VDSL2+ connections.

Further, worser than ADSL2+, VDSL2+ will drop speed faster than ADSL2+ technology due to the higher frequencies used.

It does however have a place in city centres for example, where many businesses might be able to take advantage of the technology to deliver faster speeds, to their business, or multiuser environments, for example, internet cafes, where multiple users might be on at the same time, accessing high bandwidth resources, like BoobTube, the video sharing site.

It allows connection to such type of businesses that wouldn’t find it economically viable to install ethernet connections for example, or where the only input is the phone line.

WiMAX still has a clear advantage over VDSL2+, going faster, I believe at 100Mbps, and dropping off further from the base station (with range in the area of 30kM or more),  so it offers faster speeds at longer coverage - though the technology is still in development.

If FTTN were to proceed, I imagine the wise network builder would put in VDSL2+ to make the right move ahead of time, otherwise they’d find themselves upgrading equipment in years later.

Eftel are playing the waiting game at the moment, waiting on the technology to be ratified, before proceeding with deployment.

It’ll be interesting to see the progress in that arena over the next two years, this year alone should see progress, next year, we will hopefully see rapid deployment, coinciding with the PIPE international cable launch, and possibly FTTN as well.

Enjoy!

He also made comment over the coverage of WiMAX, saying the coverage was non existent indoor at just 2kM.

Airspan, the supplier had followed up the comments made by Garth Freeman, stating reasons such as poor backhaul, lack of QoS, and the company choosing ‘cheaper’ options to cut costs, and cut performance.

I know if I spend $20 on a product, I expect a $20 job out of it. The same reason, if I spent $500, I expect a $500 job from it. I expect to be able to look at it, and decide, yep, that was worth $20.

Naturally, the more I spend, the better the quality of a product or service that would be received, so if you want top notch, pay more sort of runs rampant throughout many industries, one which to not believe such, is web hosting, which can be very deceitful. But that’s another topic.

Buzz complaining seems to stem from their desire to get WiMAX, but make sure they don’t pay the correct premium for WiMAX, so, when the service performs poorly, rather than look through and decide, OK, Internode have good results, we have bad, they are using outdoor technology, we are using indoor, he simply thought - let’s go bash the technology, screw the supplier and move on.

Sure, if there are issues with something, go back to the supplier, don’t go ripping into it in public, customers generally take matters to the TIO when things aren’t working out, Buzz, decided instead of spending the required money to bring the network up to speed, they would just whinge and whine.

Not a smart move, and not a good way of getting a positive view from customers, bagging out a technology when there own cost cutting seems to be the blame.

Airspan naturally have a technology, company name, and reputation to protect from Buzz’s complaint, so the responses are all about damage control, Internode, much the same, they have customers to bring on to a WiMAX network, they are seeking to cover their asses, but that said, they wouldn’t be resorting to mistruths, like it would seem Buzz has.

I don’t get a full 24Mbit service. Do I blame the DSLAM? Do I blame the space the exchange is hosted in? Do I blame the DSL technology, or do I blame the distance where I am, and the quality of the copper wire to provide the service?

Perhaps if Buzz looked at it that way, they might see blaming the technology is pointless if it is all about the quality of the equipment used in the technology deployed, or the quality of the network that drives it.

WiMAX, isn’t the blame, the cheap arse ISP is.

Enjoy!

They recently announced they had plans to buy TPG, for around $200 million dollars or so, which would add significant customer numbers and infrastructure to the mix, resulting in them seeing stronger financial data, but how will they pay for it? I can see that they have something near $20 million in cash. They probably need an additional $180 million or more to complete the deal, which means they will have to get some form of finance to complete the acquisition. I am aware some of the payment is with shares, so it could be less than $180 million, but they still need to get the financing for it either way.

What is left to consolidate in the industry? All the ISPs would be doing if they did continue to buy is to simply make bigger companies destroy some competition, and find that they can reduce some costs somewhere due to network merging (ie. Soul and TPG merge networks, all of a sudden, they don’t need ALL that capacity).

The mess is, as iiNet will tell anyone, in the integration of the existing system, so that customers become “Soul” customers for example, which means moving billing, customer data, support, addressing, all that information under one roof so that the customers, and the staff supporting those customers are on the same platform.

iiNet when it integrated OzEmail had a few hiccups with integration from what I recall, they fixed them, and they weren’t significant blunders, but they did cause some customers to get confused.

Another Blog I have been reading a little of lately, is John Linton (Exetel Management), and a recent post by him was talking of a ‘per customer’ price.

The prices spoke of in that blog were in the area of $200 - $800 a customer! A customer can, in real terms be considered a ‘6 month customer’ - some might stay 12, but the average user on Whirlpool Surveys commits to only a 6 - 12 month contract. That customer, they would likely be making around $10 off, assuming the company didn’t make any expensive errors with a customer service, like Netspace did with me, when they provisioned a 512k service instead of the paid for and requested 1500k service, which according to my knowledge would have cost them the 6 month break fee for cancelling the service, and then submitting a new order - they were true idiots, but enough of that.

With the commit times being in the 6 - 12 month arena, the most profit one could hope to make off a customer without any upselling of VoIP or the like is $120 - $150 or so dollars. Paying $300 a customer? Who on earth would do that. On each customer, you are losing somewhere between $50 - $500 dollars. I must be missing some hidden value here with a customer, customers add to profit lines and also increase costs, so the ‘advantage’ can’t be in adding customers, it might be an increase in word of mouth marketing, but, if you botch a few services, well - some customers can be like me. Never let you live it down. Others will simply just not recommend you to anyone.

So, with that factored in, the purchase of an ISP at $300 a customer would still be extremely expensive, unless there was something else to gain. What that is, aside from a larger network and some cost savings is rather unknown. $200 million over 200,000 customers - $1000 a customer? A little crazy. But then, the DSLAMs and so forth would bring that down to $600 or so, still an insane amount per customer unless those customers carry some kind of ‘we will always bow down to our loyal leader - TPG’ mentality. Or, if all of them employed mafia techniques and made sure any new customer would be a new customer of the ISP, then, well $1000 is a bargain. But I have my doubts.

It’ll be interesting to watch what Soul and TPG getting together will do for the shares. I know there will be some devaluation due to the merger,  but also an increase because of the asset, profit, finances and customer gains.

Enjoy!

The reasoning behind that is Telstra is forseeing a threat from LSS based competition, which allows others to provide ADSL2+ and VoIP services to consumers, effectively removing a good fair chunk of Telstra’s retail revenue for each customer they move over, and Telstra’s gain after such a significant loss is a $2.50 wholesale LSS charge from the gaining ISP, plus any line rental the customer commits to pay. Assuming the customer was on Home Line Budget before the so called ‘charity change’, Telstra would receive $19.95 + $2.50 for a customer service, and the rest of the revenue would find its way to the ISP and any suppliers it would use.

That’s a fantastic move, as it will now encourage Telstra to be competitive, but, if Telstra isn’t careful in it’s pricing, they could be forced to reduce existing wholesale prices on other services, such as ADSL1, to ensure they don’t breach the Trade Practices Act - something they have breached so, so many times before.

The retail price adjustment is of course a market share gaining move, they provide ADSL2+ at prices inline with competitors to make moving ISP less attractive to those that don’t have a significant interest in changing ISP on the grounds of downtime.

Telstra, in it’s typical fashion still likes to keep any decision made tied into an appeal, so that they can find someway to argue against it.

To date, of all the appeals, only 1 has been successful. They have a pretty poor record, and it gets poorer with each and every vexatious case they choose to bring before the courts.

It’s only common sense! Others want to use a part of a network as part of providing PART of a service.

Telstra get paid for providing PART of a service. It’s really that simple. I don’t get what Telstra can’t see there. It’s a $2.50 charge on LSS to cover any reasonable billing costs, since Telstra don’t exactly providing anything additional on an LSS service, and they still collect all maintenance and line costs from the customers line rental anyway.

Enjoy!

I tried, and tried, took wrong turns and ignored every direction, waiting for it to at some point say … I quit.

But, it was too good. It was a little slow at some points to tell me of how to take another turn, and suggested that I took the 3rd exit at some non-existent roundabout here locally.

It was also cut off a few times, such as “Turn Rig..” - heh, I ignored it.

It suggested I take an illegal turn today too, travelling down the wrong side of a local road, to go up a street that was essentially left turn only, not a good state to be in.

I only wanted to get this because I plan on doing a few trips in unfamiliar territory, and after our, well, OK zoo trip, I figure that I’ll need something giving directions and the ability to assess hundreds of thousands of streets in a few minutes.

The TomTom One does that really nicely, and even helps avoid tolls - where is the future of tolls now?

I also took out a new comprehensive insurance policy on our little ride, not because it’s worth a shit load of money, it’s because there are so many idiots in the Sydney area, that don’t believe indicators work for example, that it’d be a very cost effective option to take out such a policy!

I was amazed at the huge expense they wanted to hit me up though, it seems to be based off years driving, and well, with not even 1 year there yet, they want to charge a huge premium for it, simply put, it’d cost $2K a year to insure a car that costs around double that to replace.

If I’m accident free for 2 years, then I’d have been losing out to the tune of $4K. I could have replaced the car in that amount of time, so that doesn’t seem like a viable long term thing, but if they pay the tow truck and repairs and trip for me home if some dick in Sydney got their licence by pure luck, then I can rest easy in the fact that they pay the bills, I pay no excess, the idiot at fault well, pays everything.

I’d only really need it for the trips in Sydney, we don’t do a lot of them, so it’s not worthwhile for a long term thing, and as mentioned above, accident free for 2 years means I’m ahead another car.

Back to the TomTom, a few issues that annoy me: Non-existent roundabouts in the local area, advertised, but unavailable camera alerts, sometimes a little slow at announcing upcoming turns where the route has been travelled off, and other similar data.

We plan to take another trip to Sydney at some point soon, using this device to see if it can hit the markers spot on, and how it responds, and test for anything inaccurate. I hate having to be somewhere at a specific time, and a wrong turn screws that up completely, so knowing timing data in advance is good, and we just have to add time if there is any traffic flow issues.

I do have a good sense of direction, and I hope that in Sydney, this device has a good sense of one way streets!

Enjoy!

That’s a lot of money to be forcing from consumers struggling with mortgage rises, and other factors, more so in a market where the pressures are on the price being dropped, and value for money being increased.

What makes Telstra so sure it should get 18% or more on a network investment? Considering a FTTN network is more than a 30 year investment, they could easily survive and do well from an 8% return, so why 18% is beyond me.

The costs of the network only go up when someone smashes down a node, which would be ‘rare’, or if a fibre cable was cut through, also not a very common experience when you have metro and regional areas with in place cable locations.

Further, why on earth should they get 18%? We could argue all the way about why they shouldn’t get it, starting with the lack of competition during Telstra’s construction, through to now, where competition has a difficult time taking a dominant lead due to Telstra.

Why should they get it? Shareholders can easily find somewhere else to invest their money. CEOs can easily find a new company to be a dickhead at the helm of. And networks can be built by many other companies than Telstra.

So, what makes Telstra so special to ask for 18% return on any FTTN investment? It all just looks like they are the dominant provider, so they’ll say this and if no one takes it, tough luck, you get none at all.

An 18% return on $4 billion is equal to $720 million. That $720 million will be coming from around 7 million consumers pockets, which means they are seeking around $121 off each of the 7 million customers to pay for and build the network (ie. the cost of building and the cost of the return). This is compared to $45 off each of the 7 million customers on an 8% return, so you must ask, why does Telstra feel they are entitled to that extra $76? What does it get you? Nothing. What does it get Telstra? Phil, with a lot more weight added.

That is $76 per customer per year, so it is clear the prices will go upward to cope with this, as in the current environment, profit per customer for non Bigpond customers is near the $10 mark, I’m sure.

Which reflects again, what need is there for FTTN if prices will soar, and performance will be pretty much on par with current ADSL2+ deployments? Doesn’t seem necessary.

Phil even went as far as to claim it was ‘high risk’. FTTN isn’t high risk. You build the infrastructure, and it lasts for some significant time, that time period allows for Telstra to suck up profits each and every year, for 30 years or more.

And due to the nature of the environment, FTTN will be practically competitor free for some significant time due to the high investment costs and the lack of technical viability of node to node interconnection.

Seems like Phil has not much of an idea of what high risk is, FTTN would be very low risk, and given an overbuild protection agreement to ensure Telstra doesn’t try and force me out of business, and $4 billion in the bank, I’d not hesitate to build for an 8% yearly return. It makes sense, it’s MORE money for shareholders, without pickpocketing the consumers.

The high-risk component of FTTN is only with Telstra, no other competitor has the ability to overbuild nationally, another FTTN network, it is not financially viable, and it is not technically viable to overbuild, unless, you are Telstra, who will happily run at even a significant loss, just to maintain dominant marketshare and force competitors out of the market.

G9 still have my vote on this regard with just a 10 year overbuild protection arrangement makes it worthwhile. Telstra had at least 30 years. G9 getting 10 ? That’s a peice of cake.

Enjoy!

That’s of course the male lion at Taronga Zoo, where we decided to visit today, and take a look around at the various animals on display.

The Lion in the above picture is really cool! They keep them in behind ‘glass’ type cages, so you can see them in full view.

The bear wasn’t very playful, and didn’t seem to have any other mates to play with. So, I was curious what they do to keep them ’social’. Perhaps captivity isn’t about maintaining social aspects.

No visit would be complete without of course meeting Dumbo. The elephant with eyes that look like he has been eating some grass of a questionable source, and a smile that stretches from ear to ear.

Dumbo looked very happy munching on the grass, and I have a few guesses why, perhaps he is content with his environment, or perhaps his smile was unintentional. Still a good view of an elephant.

We actually have a group of pictures for this one, where he is picking up, eating, and coming back for more. This was perhaps the not the best of them, as there is one which makes him look a lot happier, but I skipped it.

I was curious how much these two charge for cleaning gutters, as I simply don’t want to go get a ladder and do it myself. They didn’t seem to give a price, but they weren’t willing to do it for free for some reason.

The giraffe exhibit was a bit packed due to feeding and a demonstration in progress, but we did manage to fetch some good pictures of those two.

For some reason, we couldn’t get through this wire fence to get to the stepping stones in the water to get to the other side. Not sure why that is, there was nothing to suggest we couldn’t go through, just the wire fence wouldn’t open. Oh well.

The seal seemed to be one of the most active animals there, swimming, and surfacing continually, and ‘blowing’ water from it’s mouth. Very active, very playful animal.

Unfortunately they had closed the seal theatre exhibit, where they show you activities with the seals, as it was undergoing redevelopment.

Parking was also not nice there at all!

The drive down was good, with exception of a few wrong directions, but on the whole we did pretty well for our first time down in Sydney (and my first time driving in Sydney). The trip was intended to get familiar with some parts of inner sydney, so I can drive those comfortably, but it seemed a little pointless driving 3 hours all up for a ‘getting familiar’ trip, so we also decided to get a little more familiar with the Zoo too, which was only around 15 minutes or so away.

The traffic flow in Sydney is a little awkward, for example, many of the roads there mean you are able to reach out the window and kiss the passenger in the car beside you, there doesn’t seem to be much breathing room - amazingly there are still a chunk of 4WD/ SUV vehicles on the road with not a single scrap of mud on any of them - yet, hit by another car, or hit by another 4WD, the passengers inside could face severe roll over damage. Some people are just pure idiots. It’s like a news item I read recently, it was titled in such a way it read US gives Kosovo weapons to create peace.

Yep, throwing weapons at something sure generates peace. Not. That said, give me an AK47, and I am sure I’ll have peace. A lot of peace. And a fantastic ‘peice’. Funny title, funny news, stupid government though.

Anyway, the Sydney trip down to gain familiarity wasn’t a successful trip, it was incident free, but due to the wrong directions (ie.. turning off the freeway some 50kM sooner than we should have - sorry, my human GPS isn’t accurate) we couldn’t get accurate timing for the raw trip down, not to mention that but, the chosen car park, we couldn’t find the exit to as well, which sort of sucked, but we got the trip back nutted out, and I reviewed the maps myself (never rely on a human GPS), and I can see the trip down is just as easy, it was just made difficult due to wrong directions from the GPS.

The Zoo was a fantastic day out, and really is a great sight to see if your looking to fill in time, have something to do when there is nothing else to do, or simply ‘for the animals’.

Enjoy!

We can see on Now We Are Talking, this article:
http://www.nowwearetalking.com.au/Home/Page.aspx?mid=364#intNav52

Interesting to note, that no where in that article is the true text of the article mentioned, or even, where to find the true article.

The article in its entirety is located here:
http://www.commsday.com/comment/reply/228

It’s interesting to note that Telstra’s so called ‘balanced discussion’ on Now We Are Talking left out many other relevent points of the article, and they simply resorted to attacking OPEL.

The points reflected in the article were that Internode have claimed the technology as proven in their deployment.

Buzz’s roll out uses a different access method, using what we assume is an indoor type access, so it has to penetrate customer premises as well.

OPELs rollout is proposed to be fixed, external antenna wireless, which many wireless groups worldwide will tell you are successful, using regular 802.11g gear- yep the same equipment used in homes for regular wireless access, they’ve been meshing streets, neighbourhoods and suburbs together.

OPEL propose to use a more powerful spectrum then that used in such roll outs also.

But, rather than keep to a claim mentioned on the site, ‘fair and balanced’, they do whatever they can to try and influence the views of the reader to convince them that WiMAX is incapable, and OPEL should be dumped.

It’s a good thing Phil Burgess doesn’t hold any real position of power. Someone would cry my phone doesn’t work, and he’d slam all copper technology as being bad. C’mon Phil, do it. I want to see what the shareholders do to you afterwards.

The WiMAX networks are capable, ask Internode, ask other companies trialling the technology, the fact is, there is one bad egg. It’s like the 1 in 1000 rule. Sell 1000 products to someone, 1 of them is bad.

You also have to question Telstra’s strong objection to OPEL and why they are being so persuasive to see it discontinued.

I bet most people wouldn’t bother unless they have something to gain from it not going ahead, or it presents a clear threat to themselves.

Yep, logic suggests Telstra is fighting this, with whatever little strings it can grab at, just to make sure that it doesn’t go ahead, not because they believe it’s a ‘bad duplicating move and inferior technology’ - who are they to be critics of a technology they have never used? - they are actually threatened with it.

Any reasonable person should be able to clearly see that. Telstra aren’t looking after anyone’s interests but their own. Anyone who isn’t presently financially involved with such an initiative, can see clearly that WiMAX is a smart move by the previous government, it fills black spots, it adds competition, it delivers innovation.

All those, Telstra are REALLY, REALLY scared of. And Phil is Telstra’s Fear representative. When something makes Sol wet his pants from being scared, Phil goes out to try and make everyone agree by injecting any number of spin arguments.

In this case, it was a single comment that it wasn’t working out for a specific deployment, on the other instance, where the government requested network information, it was national security.

Just spill it, you are big wimps, and can’t simply suck it up and accept that competition will survive, regardless of the whinging and fear injections. There’s nothing that you can do to eliminate competition, as every move made is one scanned for competitive effects.

BT Telecom said it best, when they demonstrated that it was best for them to work with industry and the company was much more highly valued as a result. Working with industry delivers better outcomes, faster.

Telstra don’t care if they get a new network in faster, sure, if they get chosen, it could mean higher profits for them to ensure Sol meets his so called KPI targets, but, competition won’t allow that to happen, and neither will the ACCC, or the government, so the key bodies they need on their side are turning a blind eye to them.

They are invariably screwed. You piss off everyone, and well, when you want something, everyone isn’t there for you. They could still end up being the winning bidder, but the terms of access will still be dictated by the ACCC to some degree.

Enjoy!

The CEO described problems which are generally common with wireless technologies in poor environments, such as packet loss, low speeds, poor signal, and high latency.

The network is an Airspan supplied network, and Freeman (Buzz CEO) has been previously praising the technology, however, that praise seems to have disappeared at this year, he has labelled their specific deployment a failure.

I believe WiMAX isn’t the solution for all areas. That’s easily understood because you simply cannot expect wireless from one side of a mountain to work on the other. You would build it ontop of the mountain. I’m not saying that has happened here of course, but I suspect there might be solutions to their coverage issue by fixing deployment areas.

It remains uncertain what spectrum they were using for their network, which could also be a contributing factor to the failure. 

The company has dropped WiMAX and now will head towards “TD-CDMA” technology, which provides similar service to the WiMAX standard, with assumably better penetration due to a different frequency, and also a wireless DOCSIS network, which much like Telstra’s Cable network, allows speeds of up to 38Mbps in a 3.5Ghz spectrum range.

Internode have previously praised their very own Airspan deployment, claiming 6Mbps at 30KM with a constant speed, and Simon Hackett himself has backed the technology.

OPEL is the key subject here. With 1 deployment showing it works ‘exceedingly well’, and the other being a ‘miserable failure’, will we see similar results with OPEL? Miserable Failure + Exceedingly Well = “Normal Service”? Probably not, it’d be similar to what happens today, there will be blackspots, but the blackspots it fills and fixes will likely outweigh those that fail.

I’m not sure if WiMAX is a complete failure, or Buzz usage of the technology was the failure. Just the same like WiMAX is a complete success, or Internode usage of the technology was the success, without that detailed information, it’s hard to form a true conclusion.

I also am unfamiliar with the Hervey Bay surrounds, but I guess that they could also have interfered with the technology, if there wasn’t plenty of planning.

Enjoy!

Recently he indicated he wanted network information supplied by all companies with existing networks to provide this information to prospective FTTN bidders.

I’m aware of two companies directly refusing to participate in this process, no prizes for guessing who the first one is, the other is, strangely, PIPE networks.

PIPE seem to have some objections about the network data finding its way into competitors hands, and one PIPE representative could recently be seen on Whirlpool recently, echoing Telstra’s national security line.

The fact is, our communications network, is not a national security worry. It’s easily understood that anyone can get a job with Telstra, and work their way in to get access to such data, or become aware of where prime interconnection points are located in busy capital cities like Sydney, and simply disable them with a pair of scissors, chainsaw, acid, or plastic explosive.

Further, if they really wanted to make national security attacks, well, I don’t find this worthy of writing, but of course, they could just isolate the Telstra buildings in Sydney, and attack those by whatever means they deem necessary, since a huge percentage of the national communications runs directly with Telstra.

So, I don’t believe the national security angle one bit. Damaging a room with servers will knock out many of the communications links used, meaning that once they are out, they’ve taken away a large amount of our communications, and pissed off a lot of consumers and businesses.

Such acts aren’t likely to happen however, but this isn’t due to not knowing where the locations are, they are easily found, the acts aren’t likely to happen, because they don’t really hold much in the way of significance at the right level for it to be worthwhile.

And, again, we had Phil Burgess of Telstra spewing out similar lines, and screaming “Singapore Government” - so much so that an article was published at one point in the media showing that such acts just don’t seem newsworthy. No one really gives a damn.

The Singapore Government don’t have much to do with Tamasek Holdings, the actual corporation that manages Optus, which then manages Optus Australia.

They just simply use them as an income vehicle for their nation, that’s really all Temasek is. There is numerous quotes from Temasek in the media, not related to Optus however, but quoting that the Singapore Government don’t even look at plans, they are all managed by this independant holdings company. Much the same like Telstra was when it was mostly government owned. All decisions were made by Ziggy, and the Australian Government didn’t really do much or see much of the plans for example, of the New Zealand arm of Telstra, TelstraClear.

All that whinging, is simply to cover up the fact they don’t want competitors being able to use the network data to commercial advantage (or at all if they can help it).

Anyway, back to Conroy. He really is being a man of his words, quoted recently as saying if they didn’t deliver the documents, he’d be placing legislation in place to force the hand. This is a great move for him as a politician, it shows he has desire, he shows he can persevere and make sure he reaches his goal. A real good quality.

That said though, I still disagree with FTTN being built, it serves to increase prices for little gain. Stay with ADSL2+, or even roll out competing other technologies to fix other issues as a SOLUTION.

The FTTN network will be mainly useless, and for a minister who agrees ‘broadband is too dear’ - as quoted in The Australian, he somewhat has some warped policies on fixing the ‘expensive’ problem.

Enjoy!

FTTN isn’t the way of the future. Look at the potential of returning back to a monopoly, the reduction and lack of interest in investment and competition. How will that improve, if the only access to a customer is via a DSLAM port owned by one provider who can charge whatever they like?

How will they invest, if either:
a) The price is too low for the competition to want to invest?
b) The price is too high, but investing is impossible due to limitations such as high cost of cutover, or technological unviability?

Either of those scenarios are very likely should an FTTN network be built. The owner of the FTTN network is unlikely to want to allow access to specific customer wires for a competing node, or, the nodes or cutovers will either be financially or technologically unviable. There isn’t anything that is impossible, it’s just not viable.

Then there is the other scenario. Who will want to invest in competing infrastructure if they can get it dirt cheap and don’t want to put any more out for the future, when it comes to either, node access, or backhaul access?

I did lodge a submission to them, I do hope they consider it in detail, I mentioned points about having a competitive marketplace. This is a marketplace where there is an interest in investment, so the prices can’t be excessively low, as well as a market where there is a interest in competition, so the prices aren’t excessively high, or unfair terms are forced onto competitors to the FTTN network owner.

I also mentioned in my submission, that FTTN is much more expensive, and will not deliver the fastest possible speeds that technologies like WiMAX will. FTTN is a band-aid solution, it’s a big expensive band-aid. They should consider going directly to a competitive framework for FTTH in metro areas, or, investing in national backhaul, or investing in wireless technologies.

FTTN whilst will bring some places up to speed, wireless technologies will be needed in nearly all areas to fill competitive blackspots, or technology blackspots, so that everyone has access to a reliable, speedy service.

I do not believe FTTN is the ultimate answer, and I think they should step back from that idea and consider all other alternatives to encouraging competitive investment, or doing the job for them with a technology that is future looking, such as WiMAX or FTTH.

WiMAX is technologically, and financially ideal for this nation. It fits our population density, and is not expensive to deploy, and doesn’t leave blackspots if deployed (and blackspots can be filled with an extra tower anyway) correctly.

FTTH is technologically not sound for regional areas, and financially doesn’t match a business case for Australian demand. The average customer is deemed to be wanting to spend $40 - $60 for a internet service. The cheapest of which spend $30 or less.

FTTH will force the prices higher, and so will FTTN. WiMAX will maintain prices, or even reduce them due to lower maintenance costs. WiMAX will acheive the speeds, and in the future acheive even better speeds, and can be deployed anywhere there is a tower setup. There’s no ‘fixed line’ requirement, like there is with all other technologies.

FTTH is the ultimate technology, for a government with money pouring out of its ears to invest in. Judging by the razors slicing up and down the commonwealth, I’m amazed they haven’t sliced their own pay packets, but, there isn’t spare funds to build a national FTTH network, so that would probably be scrapped unless it were for private investment, in which case, loop back around to monopoly and competition issues.

My submission to the panel was more focused on the importance of both, competition and technology choice, so we don’t burn $4 billion on a waste. Australia doesn’t need anything for broadband, except regional and rural backhaul, and a cat o’ nine tails to use on Telstra.

Enjoy!

It’s amazing that I can move 1GB 100kM faster by rail then I could the internet.

Heck, it’d be quicker to deliver 2GB 100kM away, using a car then it would the internet, yet the internet would be the medium of choice to save on driving time, petrol costs, etc.

Labor however, in a recent article are quoted as saying broadband is as much important as rail.

I’m sort of convinced on that point, for my example described above.

How does big business decentralise if they can’t get stuff between offices at speeds that would be quicker than driving there? Naturally, it’s not a problem for Telstra who can setup a fat tax payer built fibre pipe wherever they see it fit, but that isn’t going to help industries expand out into regional areas and solve Sydney’s Housing Crisis.

You know something else I find amazing? All the petrol companies deliver petrol to the service stations using trucks, ie. They use more petrol to deliver petrol. Doesn’t seem very efficient for a delivery method, espiecially if those trucks are travelling hundreds of kilometers to deliver a few thousand liters of petrol, only to come back a few days later.

Wouldn’t it be more efficient to send those products by rail to the nearest regional area, and deliver what they need, and keep supplies in secure storage at many areas? Or they could of course have ran pipelines to the stations, but, that would probably have been extremely costly to build in the ground, and I imagine that others would try and break the pipe open