Took off my jacket @ Newtown station because the night air, though chilly, was warm enough for only a single ‘jumper/cardigan.’

Train gets in, I get on, and immediately have to put the jacket back on. Geez the train is freezing.

But let’s just blame the State Government Owned, and Operated Railroad operators for the continuing incompetence. Or, better yet, let’s blame the lackey worker who has to put in double-shifts and isn’t allowed to question the efficiency of the network. After all, the current government (State) has only had 10+ years running the show, they haven’t yet completely put their buddies into all posts in the organisation.

The previous government really screwed things up when they sacked all those incompetent managers and replaced everyone. 10 years is about minimum to get our buddies back into the system and totally screw the populace.

Democracy, the NSW freedom to ‘game’ the system so you can legally screw people!

With the right amount of money, what is the ‘real’ difference between democracy and dictatorship?

My sister-in-law suffered sadly for beauty on Saturday, then spent Sunday coiled up in front of the television keeping warm (supposedly) or was that not going to church so she could watch movies.

It seems a sad maxim of the ‘civilised society’ that so many link their self-worth to their exterior outlook, or just as sadly the number of brand things dangling.

Too sady, too true.

Rail travellers are used to private papers hawking themselves for FREE espousing some agenda (I don’t know because I don’t read it often enough) providing quick, short term entertainment and presumably paid by advertisers.

This morning we were greeted at the gate to Bankstown Rail by a hawker giving away free Daily Telegraph rags, wow. Everyone at the station seemed to have a copy, whilst other stations didn’t have travellers getting on loaded down with the paper.

Kudos to the Telegraph for trying to get their message out. There used to be a reason when the regular print press would give away free copies, but this time around I’m mystified.

Of course, my dad religiously buys the paper so they’ve wrung their litre of blood from our family.

Dad’s rugby fanaticism hasn’t spilled over to buying the “the official” paper for the NSW Rugby Team – Waratahs (one of the sponsors being the Sydney Morning Herald www.smh.com.au)

I had hoped that that Sonny Bill William’s saga would have died away by now, but I guess it just wanted to have as many people push across their own agenda items. Sonny Bill Williams (SBW) is an incredible high profile athlete who played Rugby League in Sydney for the Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs. My son’s team.

In short, SBW left in July for France, breaking an existing player contract (with lot’s of money) to go to France for even more money. The bigger story is more complicated, otherwise the ditched club and industry (CB Bulldogs, Australia’s National Rugby League) wouldn’t be spending heaps of money on lawyers to try and prevent SBW from playing in France.

Apart from the legal jurisdictional, sovereignty land mines with this law suite, you have to wonder how real this effort is in suing someone to come back and play for you.  How is that to work? Supposedly SBW will be forced to come back and play with the CBB, and he is supposedly going to run on the park every week-end putting in his best because he has been shown the LOVE by his club.

Breaking Contract.

I’ve heard some flawed commentators (former players) going on and on about how vile this whole thing of breaking his contract. All while forgetting their own high profile, press covered, contractual fights where he and his employer reneged on a number of contractual details.

Contracts are for the benefit of the guy/gal with the biggest stick. Unfortunately for the NRL, SBW spewed in their face and put himself a distance away where he hopes the NRL’s big stick can’t touch him.

You really have to watch “The Legend of Johnny Lingo” to get a Pacific view of what contract negotiations should be, as opposed to the bastardised system it is now. It shouldn’t just be a Pacific view.

Differences

If you are running a Million/Billion dollar organisation, such as the the NRL or Australian Rugby Union (ARU) and are dependent on Pacific Islanders as part of your product, then I think it behoves you as a business to get a better understanding of your product.

If in Australia and you manage such a corporation and you’ve never been to a Kava Party, or a Hangi, a Pacific Wedding, or a Funeral, never seen at least “The Laughing Samoans,” or “Sione’s Wedding,” or God forbid you’ve never seen “The Legend of Johnny Lingo,” please don’t even assert that you have any idea about your Pacific bread.

If you’ve not gone to church with a Pacific Islander, you’re never going to understand the social binding integration of Pasifika.

Recent high-profile (huge money spinner) moves by ‘Isileli Folau at the Melbourne Storm moving to Brisbane, as well as Digby Ioane moving from the Western Australia Force back to Brisbane should have rung bells in the hallowed halls.

Islanders aren’t whites, they’re not blacks, they’re not like your other products. They’re loyalties and frames of reference are different.

In New Zealand the whole Islander thing was forced on the white culture by the gangs, and has evolved into a deeper cohesion between the different cultures. Of course, people being forcibly moved from their land may some day display anti-social behaviour and in retrospect you’ve got to consider the Maori and Samoan response have been quite civilised. In Australia, minor cultures are easily subverted and/or ignored.

Move On

The SBW saga highlights a number of shortcomings in the existing entertainment industry using athletes.

Either the industries learn from it and deal with it in a constructive manner or things are going to get from worse to worse.

The Pacific Islander issue needs to be reviewed and dealt with, that’s one way forward. This has always been a problem brushed under the table in Rugby League and increasing in Rugby Union.

Was having some serious problems with my music collection on the phone and after a couple of days of fiddling here and there I pulled the MicroSD out, plugged into the Laptop and …

Format solved the problem.

Before formatting the MicroSD I took a look around and sure enough there was a directly with a funny label implying that it was used by my phone for something, and the files inside that directory was full squiggly funny little characters (hint: good indicator of a disk corruption)

I wanted to trash the disk anyway, for a clean slate set up.

The problems I was having were Windows Mobile Pocket Edition (whatever version) would index my music 1,000+ songs, but I couldn’t get a song listed at all. Meanwhile, if I open the file by double-clicking it in Explorer it would happily play the song.

The 2nd problem, when I listed the categories/genres it would have some old genres that I had long excommunicated from my desktop. Deleting the music files and re-copying the music hadn’t helped, so there was obviously a collection of knowledge somewhere else storing this old outdated information.

I guess I could have just deleted that “metadata” folder, but while I was there, it was just as sweet to wipe the whole thing and feel refreshed with the new start.

The phone really is a computer.

Solution #1. Reboot

Solution #2. Format

I know people have been rebooting their iPhones, I wonder how you wipe stuff ?

I’m tickled happy I got a phone that supported microSD storage, I bought and 8GB card to go with my 2GB (which O4 got for her phone) and the 1GB stick that came with the phone. 32GB has been publicly announced (the design limit for this particular phone.)

I can upgrade by just buying a card, too cool (obviously waiting for the price to be practical, and my collection to become unmanageable.)

Woo hoo, built my first box in aeons.

Been playing with various bits and pieces at work trying to piece together at least another functional box. Sometime later we decided that we needed a new box and we would look at reusing as many components from the trash pile I was playing with.

Unfortunately, bits and pieces of the trash pile was working, but together there was no ensemble. We decided to get new bits for the parts that looked like were dead and yesterday was my turn to put the bits together (and pray I don’t fry anything.)

I think the last time I actually had to put a box together from scratch was back in 1998? As I recall we had a bum machine at QSC and had to get the motherboard from Australia(?) Ever since then I’ve basically had some under my wings that I told to read the Taiwanese documentation and cable the box together. Of course that was an experience in itself in finding ports not working because they just weren’t wired up.

Anyhow, a relative newbie and not wanting to ever open this box again I made sure every lose wire got plugged into something even if there was no likelihood that it would ever get used. Double checked the bits I couldn’t figure out with our resident hardware dude, crossed my fingers and pushed 240v into the machine.

Poof, no-sound, nothing! Woo hooo, go software dude. In the distant pass, when computers don’t power up, and you’re somewhat certain that the power supply works fine, pull the PCI boards out and see what happens. So, pulled out a few boards and voila machine sings beautifully.

That wasn’t too bad, now was it?

What are you using?

I was on the phone helping out a client with one of their machines when he asked,

What are you using ?

…

I’m using Ubuntu now, and it’s much better now. I’m never going back.

Apart from using two laptops (one Vista the 2nd Ubuntu) what I’m using more and more these days is my HTC Touch II, a Windows Mobile phone.

I really wanted a phone with a good Media Player, because using Public Transport for 3 hours each day really sucks when you can’t find something productive to use with that time.

Strangely enough, I really don’t use the Media Player for much entertainment consumption (also known as, I have more music on the phone then anything else, but I mostly use the Media Player to listen to Podcasts.)

Apart for the standard phone features (taking a call, making a call, using the phone book/contacts) a feature of the phone I check every day, is the little weather app. It’s just a ‘rich’ client that connects on demand to some weather website and gives me a sweet summary of weather forecasts for Sydney.

Weather Forecast for Sydney? It’s cold, and staying cold.

The HTC Touch II is heaps slower than the iPhone, and doesn’t have the gazillion apps touted for that platform. But there seems to be a gazillion apps for Windows Mobile out on the Internet, there’s just not a single repository for finding them so you have to have some serious Search Fu to find them.

I’ve updated my touch to the current Windows Mobile 6.1 platform thanks to the community out there, and am looking at a few apps for their usefulness for my experience.

So, I’m sitting here on the train when some punk (yeah, yeah, just a little envy) gets on the train, see’s me showing off by having my laptop out and catching up on some good old news feeds (so I can spend the time at home with the kids instead of catching up on static news.)

He sits down and pulls out his iPod Touch.

OK, coool, he’s bopping his head up and down and “having a good time” although the sound leakage from his earphones either means his blowing his eardrums or it’s leaking sound badly from not being a good ear-piece.

“Hello? Yeah, I’m on the train to Bankstown. What? You want me to get out? OK, Cool”

Whoaaa, his eyePod works as a phone?

Now, he’s got me curious cause I haven’t seen an iPhone version 1.0 in Australia so I’m trying to discreetly peak at his iPod(phone) while he’s trying to be discreetly having everyone notice him? (Remember there were quite a few sales of the iPhone 1.0 in Tonga so we’ve seen it around.)

He’s bopping his head up and down, polishing his iPod(phone.) Looking at the side of his iPod, it is definitely slimmer than the iPhone’s I’ve seen. Hmm, definitely a metallic silver back, so it’s either an iPod or an import iPhone.

This story would be sad if it weren’t such a lark.

So, I pull out my el-cheapo Nokia 6300 and call O4. Ha, ha ha, I wonder if he’s going to call someone else with his iPod phone, 8-)

Had the misfortunate to not hear the announcement that the train had rerouted, and found myself on a ride to woop woop (a term for nowhere, as in the middle of woop woop.)

On the frequent occasion when the trains are running correctly, I board and ‘alight’ at Bankstown Station (part of the Bankstown Line) shown in the diagram as a dark orange shade. Getting on at Wynyard Station the sign post said Bankstown line, and the announcer said Bankstown line (the deep orange lines on the map) but we ended up on the dark green line, taking a peak hour shortcut on the dark-green tracks.

We went from the standard route Museum –> Central –> Redfern –> blah blah –> Beverly Hills ? Where the hell are we going ?

Anyhow, since continuing the ride to further woop woop was a guarantee of having no idea of when I was getting home, I decided I better get off the train at the next stop (together with another load of people.) I guess people getting on at the last station knew where they were going and the poor sods like me had no clue.

Anyhow, we seem to have had an express to woop woop, and I only got on the slow train back to civilisation, because I was routing through the “Airport Line.” Wow!! That’s some serious tunneling.

A number of years back, after decades of government promises, someone actually got a rail line to go through to the city’s major domestic and international airports. The airports look spartan and very modernish (like the New York City Subways on Planet of the Apes) but the real cool thing was just watching that tunnel go for ever and ever. That was one huge tunnel trip (presumbly because by the time someone actually decided to get the work done, the whole place had homes on them so the only way was to go underground.)

Mind you, if I don’t see that wonderful specimen of human perseverence, I’m sure I wouldn’t feel the worse for it.

I guess the lesson to be learned here, is don’t trust the signs, check things along the way and have a packed lunch in your bag for those days you really end up in the middle of woop woop.

The day didn’t start off to well when I made that mad dash for the train, to realise I’m on a different schedule today, don’t go straight to the city, get to the coffee house first.

In some forgotten point during the age of cavemen clubbing each other on the head to make a point, some social nazi decided that it was critical for the organisation of the community that new members be introduced through stages of ‘conditioning’ into the norms of the society. In the 20th century, the induction process is variously called by the Greek Fraternities as “hazing.”

It may even be illegal in some quarters, but who is going to get in the way of social unity, and progress ?

Mr. Dave put me through Nullcube’s rigorous induction process, with the simple line.

How do you feel about walking into town?

Scum bag!!

We had our pow-wow session early Monday morning before heading into town for some real work (i.e. non-administration stuff.) “How do you feel about walking into town?” I shoulda clobbered him on the spot then.

Mr. Dave cut a quick march ‘clip’ for us from our Newtown HQ (ha ha ha, HQ is the fanciful term for where our base toilets are located 8-) and off we went. Ho K, he’s decided that we don’t need to grab a cab and then comes up with a fanciful reason for why getting a cab into town wasn’t a good idea today (the 2nd opportunity where I shoulda just clobbered him.)

He’s doing good, ‘cause he’s into this walking thing and makes the farcical attempt to get to the gymn every now and then. Mind you, I haven’t done a long walk like this for a long long time, like 1999!

The distance we’re walking here is probably akin to walking from Tofoa into town, which isn’t a bad walk, unless you have some hee bee jebee fitness fanatic pushing the pace, and you hit Broadway (less than half way to our destination) and everything’s on an incline (the wrong way.) Google Maps estimates the distance at 3 miles.

Joel Spolsky reminds us of a business idea that comes other of the former Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC.) The discussion could be summarised as:

Administration is about keeping the lights on, not telling other people what they should do.

If you want to propose something, you own it, your tender it and get it out. Have the courage of your convictions, and take responsibility for your mouth.

Wouldn’t that be an ideal world?

Obviously, either the advice was not completely understood by DEC management, or it is not in itself sufficient for success (otherwise DEC the pioneer computer systems integrator, would not have been swallowed up by a PC box mover Compaq Computer Systems to be later swallowed again by HP.)

OK, I’ve been playing around with trying to get something to replace Microsoft Outlook for handling my “lists” of things to do, and calendaring would be nice.

I’m leaning very quickly at just getting back to using Outlook for the next six months.

My favourite potential replacement is Chandler from the http://www.chandlerproject.org. Unfortunately, it will randomly choose not to let me enter a new task/event. The data seems to never get lost between app restarts, reinstalls, but its very annoying not to be able add new “issues” which basically means I can’t trust the thing as a daily planner et. al. replacement.

It is rather slow to start up, but that’s one thing that you learn to accept when trying out replacement software (i.e. not critical at this point of assessment.)

Chandler has this nice GTD (Get Things Done) gui enhancement, which is neat although I wish the auto-sorting feature could be tweaked a little more (for example, if an event isn’t going to happen for a week, I don’t need it on my screen displacing other events that are going to happen sooner.

Chandler has a nice feature for synching your everything through their hub, or you can have your own server hub. This is way cool, and supports synching more than just your calendar (which is why I prefer this type of solution to just having Google Calendar)

The big Open Source Momma Personal Information Manager (PIM) replacement Novell’s Evolution has a near current Windows port, but it is dang slow. My hour on the train is over and the thing is still starting up.

I’ve started it up a couple of times, and I’m sure if I had 64 bit Windows with everything cached on a 12GB Ram machine, it might be faster (or normal startup speed for everyone else.) i might try colinux or andlinux and that might be a better solution.

But I can synch my Outlook with my phone. My phone has been out of date for the past 2 months as I have vainly attempted to get rid of Outlook.

Wax On!!

Wycliffe Palu and the Wallaby mob are getting quite a bit of highlighting by Fox TV. Fox are doing a “men of gold” as part of their rugby promotional work. ‘Ofa and Dad would have bought Fox TV anyway, but its interesting to see how much Fox is actually investing in Rugby (where would Super 14 be without them.)

Last night’s segment asked some of the players what was their superstition, or thing they do before every game. The initial response was a continuation of their interview with winger … who was man of the match in last week’s Australia versus France game.

Aaahh, basically if they won the previous week, he’d repeat the same he did the day they won. Which must not have been that often in this year’s Queensland season (ba boom)

Brett Sheehan said he wears the same under-wear each game, which must have been a lark, because his years in the game would have worn those poor things out ten times. Or, if we were family he’s getting paid well enough that we burn his underdaks every week.

Luke Burgess says he takes 3 showers that morning, which doesn’t sound so bad, not for hygiene reasons, but because other elite players have said the same thing. But in their case they expanded that this time was spent visualising their motions and actions through the full game. Woo hoo, is that what he’s doing ? And what is the Sydney Water Board doing about that ?? Don’t we have some sort of water shortage here?

Wycliffe ? He said he offers up a prayer before each game. (ba boom)

Sometimes the young can just be airheaded.

Yesterday morning was one of those days ya just gotta wonder about our youth. Not the “youth” in general, but our Pacific Islander youth in particular.

Being the bulky lot we Islanders are, we tend to ignore the opinions of others when we feel like it.

For some unknown reason, we had a pack of Islander boys on our train, and they spent a good five minutes walking up and down the carriages, walking between the carriages and annoying everyone by leaving the doors open (there’s a draft between the carriages for some reason.)

It was just one of those moments where you wanted to ask.

Bro, didn’t you get something to eat this morning?

Man your young Pacific Islanders are bulky. Tall, and bulky. Unfortunately, like everyone else we can just be as airheaded as well.

There’s a heap of us Islanders in the Bankstown area, obvious when walking past the bus-stops and obvious when on the trains. Unfortunately, we’re not very politically savvy so we have next to zero representation in local or national government.

Our youth are just as misunderstood as other youth, and their high tolerance for pain (imbued through years of correctional facilities otherwise known as mum, dad, aunties, and uncles) makes them a fearful segment to other youth and other members of society. Strangely enough, as consequently(?) our youth are quite passive within their own society. I guess they don’t really have to prove themselves in the same way, or are a little more understood, or misunderstood in a different way ?

Every once in a while, being in the computer industry (and now more specifically in the “Security” business) you finally come across something that your family and friends can relate to.

I mean, how many people outside of IT really care much about IT, so long as their TV and toaster works (because the Internet might work, but for some reason there’s always problems with the home connection.) And, from here we know that even fewer people have any clue what IT Security people are about, or even care?

You really want to read the full story by Jennifer Jabbusch, a teaser is below but you want to read it from the beginning. Security is a real-life issue.

Grande Theft Auto …

He now has no car and no phone. So, ironically enough, he then had to approach a stranger and politely ask for the use of their cell to phone home and let the group know he was bamboozled. A few tears were shed, but his wife assured him it would be fine and he shouldn’t be scared. (No, I’m not making that up).

If you read the full article,

The moral of the story…  There are two. 1) Involve someone with a ‘security mindset’ and 2) Your security is only as strong as your people. A sweet damsel in distress… social engineering at it’s finest…

A wonderful (though said) example of real life ‘scams’ that can impact any of us (and how often do your parents, or kids open the door without a worry these days?)

But more importantly, be careful out there that something like this story doesn’t happen to you or your friends (not the hairdresser part of the story, the parking part, hoiiiii)

When you ride the trains for a living(?) people seem to begin a pattern of selecting a set range of carriages they prefer to get on. For me, I choose the carriages depending on which ones are not going to be too crowded, which usually means I get to have a nice walk to the “other-end” of the train station because people seem to congregate around the entrance/exit to the station, as well as congregating underneath the “covered” space of the station platform.

Now, one of the problems with being “at the end” of the station is that it is also a magnet for the smokers. I think there’s  a local law that prevents smokers from puffing under the covered area.

Even with the wonderful open space “at the end” of the platform, there’s more smog with the puff-mamas and puff-daddys around.

Of course, when it’s raining you’ll find me under covers and I can just run when the train arrives. Unfortunately, the dedicated puffers are still out there “at the end” of the platform.

Of course, when catching a train from one of the under-ground stations here in Sydney (for me that’s at Town Hall Station and Wynyard Station) we’re all under-cover so the smokers get a real hard time until they can get home.

O4 calls Yesterday afternoon (Monday) to tell me to call home on the landline because she things she’s lost her mobile. Somewhere in all the running around doing the Mum thing she can’t recall where she’s put the phone, or whether the phone fell out of her pocket or … A little stressed she offers that I can go ahead and get a new phone and I give her my old phone.

Woo hooo, YES!!

Just in time for the new iPhone (July 11) not!

Hmm, thinking to myself that I’m spending some time tonight on eBay looking for that great deal of a phone.

You know how it is living with little munchkins (kids.) Things just go disappearing for days, weeks and even months (years?) O4 picks me up from work and we’re still stressed about losing the phone (the implied waste of money.) Wohoo, new phone here i come.

We get home, and I take my back to the home-office and put it down. Smiling up from the desk is my new phone, not! O4’s phone had between the time she came to pick-me up and we got home, had walked into the office and sat on the desk.

Of course the kids are oblivious to the stress in looking for the phone.

We can but hope.

We’re going to get kicked out of church one of these days.

Apparently, the children were not understanding one iota of what was going on, and they decided to pull out their pens and papers out and were off into their own world of adventure.

Some colourful art work although I don’t think there’s a conference somewhere that can decide whether what we’re doing is within the bounds of church doctrine ? Whatever that may be.

The world outside today is on the scale of FREEZING so when Sisitoutai had enough of being inside we moved out and went “INSIDE” the car to keep warm while he had his cheese-snacks.

Soana Sesilia is definitely growing up faster than anyone notices and her current enjoyment is to grab the textures from the older kids and colour herself. Fortunately the textures are water based(?) and come out in the washing, but this means that the few “permanent” markers we have in the house are “locked-away” and secured like gold (or mud, depending on the effect you’re guarding.)

Wow, I guess it was worth it after all paying for the anti-virus software running on my machines (AVG http://free.grisoft.com/)

So we didn’t get my new uber mobile phone, but we did get the compact digital camera (Olympus FE-340, made in Vietnam.) Unfortunately, the camera also came with an unexpected gift.

[AutoRun]
open=fun.xls.exe
shellexecute=fun.xls.exe
shellAutocommand=fun.xls.exe
shell=Auto
[VVflagRun]
aabb=kdkfjdkfk1

The camera’s internal storage memory can take about 30 photos (at least that’s the experience we got filling it up so we can tell how many it can handle.) We charged up the lithium re-chargeable battery and started taking photos.

Plug the camera into the computer to download the pictures and we get this nice little invitation.

What!!