Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Ever lost your car in one of those multi-level carparks? Some carpark owners try to do the right thing and use animals etc. to ‘label’ the levels; others just use really big numbers and/or colour-coding. Despite that, people still can’t remember that they left their car on the ‘level kangaroo green 3’. (Aside: There was a memorable Seinfeld episode about this…)

Well, the solution is here! Craig over at Out of the Box blogged today about using the camera in his cell phone to take a picture of the sign of the level he’d parked on. So simple. So brilliant.

Of course—in true Craig style—a parking inspector/security person quizzed him about him taking photos in the carpark! At least he *saw* an official in the carpark where he parked—I don’t think I’ve ever seen one, except for those at the exit who used to take your money in the days before everything became fully automated.

Phew! It’s been a *busy* week this week… Work for the new client has taken up much of my waking and thinking time, but I’ll get there.

Here are some updates from the past couple of weeks that I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while – I’ll do them all at once and get them out of the way:

• Mandalay Road Estate released their new Zinfandel vintage a couple of months ago, so we headed over there about a month ago to try it. Good stuff! New labels too, very in keeping with the whole “Road to Mandalay” theme. Early birds got a good discount on the new vintage too – $20 a bottle instead of the usual $25. So we bought a few… plus some port. We spent a lovely couple of hours tasting wine with Bernice and Tony, the owners and winemakers. We’ll be back!
• We went to Bunbury for an appointment on Tuesday and popped in to a furniture store to see if they had any likely sofas (yes, the sofa saga continues…). They had one that suited our needs – and it was a sofa bed too! And they could deliver it the next day! I measured and double measured it after the last sofa fiasco, but when the delivery guys arrived with it on Wednesday they said it wouldn’t fit. Oh no! However, I *knew* it would – they only had to turn it on its side and it fitted through the doorway perfectly. Thinking outside the box was not up these guys alleys…
• I’ve been having trouble with a R-E-A-L-L-Y S-S-L-L-O-O-O-W-W internet connection all week, and have spent many hours on the phone to the Business Customer Support section of iinet, my ISP. The first two people who dealt with the issue were very helpful and walked me through a whole lot of stuff to do isolation testing to confirm that it was somewhere on the phone line between me and iinet. The next people I dealt with over the following days obviously can’t read, because I had to repeat the issue and the steps already taken to them both. I’ve worked in enough IT companies to *know* that issues and steps taken are recorded – hell, I even had a job number that I quoted each time! At every step, I was promised that someone would get back to me – no-one ever did. iinet’s customer support has always been good (I’ve been with them for close on 10 years), but this episode has soured my previous good experiences with them. My guess is they’ve grown too big. At no time could I get one of the original staff who dealt with the problem on Monday back on the phone – they were always ‘out’ or ‘on another call’. Anyhow, the connection seems to be back to what it was. But I still don’t know if the fault was fixed (I do know a fault was lodged with Telstra by them), or if it’s a lucky chance that it’s back working again. BTW, isolation testing is no fun… I had to disconnect my server from the router, connect the router to the laptop, connect the laptop/router direct into the phone line, etc. Sounds simple, but that’s after power cycling the router a couple of times, rebooting the server, trying all three phone line extensions with and without filters, etc. etc. And most of it was done on the floor. All to confirm that the connection was like walking up to your thighs in treacle! Even slower than dial-up.
• An observation about the one of the project teams I’m working with in Brisbane – there are about 27 on the team, five of whom are female. Which sorta fits the stats thrown around about the dearth of women in IT in Australia. Of the five females, one is a support person, one is a ex-geologist, two are programmers, and one (me!) is a technical writer. So two of those five are in the ‘helping’ side of IT.
• Some sad news. A guy my husband played basketball with and against for many years passed away a day or so ago. He would’ve only been in his 50s, fit as a mallee bull, and was still coaching kids’ basketball teams. Vale, Mike.

Watch out for dripping power! And for just one customer in the Greater Perth area (wherever *that* is) to have reconnected to the internet…

I just received this network status notification from iinet (my ISP):

Technical Summary:
Due to storm activity, power has been dripped briefly to several suburbs in the Greater Perth area. This has caused a large volume of customers to become disconnected from the Internet, temporarily increasing load on the authentication system in Perth. This issue appears to have been overcome, and customer who have regained power should be able to reconnect without further issue.

I’ll have more on iinet later, but for now, this made me chuckle!

We had to go to Bunbury yesterday to get the annual rustproofing treatment done on our cars. This was a 2+ hour job, so we decided to spend the ‘wait’ time at the local cinema. The Tint-A-Car people drove us to the cinema complex and picked us up, which was good of them!

My husband wanted to see “Pirates 3” and my preference was “Shrek 3”, so we agreed to go our separate ways. However, we both ended up in “Pirates” but only because the session we turned up for was a “Mum and bubs” session for “Shrek” and I couldn’t have coped with a theatre full of squealing and screaming kids, aged 2 to 6.

I hadn’t seen the other “Pirates” so I was a bit concerned that I may not get the storyline as easily as someone who had. Storyline? What storyline?

Seriously though, I enjoyed it! It was a rollicking good romp through some very unlikely situations, but, as with any movie, you should suspend belief and reality as you walk in the door (something I’ve always had problems with… must be the tech writer in me). I thought Johnny Depp was fantastic as Jack Sparrow; Geoffrey Rush was so suited to the weatherbeaten and well-worn pirate character he played; and Keith Richards… well, what can you say about Keif, except that he fitted the part like a glove! But I think my favourite character was the monkey – however, there just wasn’t enough of him.

When we came out, we had some lunch at Mojos in Bunbury, then the storm hit. Wild wind and rain, which didn’t abate the whole 90 minute trip back. All up we got 43mm of rain yesterday (just under 2″ in the old language), which was a well-needed drop for the farmers and the dams. It’s already the end of June and we’ve only had 93mm out of an average 146mm for the month. There’s still two days to go, but I doubt we’ll come anywhere close to the average. And for the whole year so far, we’ve had just under 280mm compared to the mean for the first 6 months of 360mm. Not good.

Craig over at Outside the Box tagged me – thanks Craig (NOT!). Here’s the deal: it seems I have to write down eight things about me that most people don’t know, then tag another group of people to do the same. Here goes:

1. When I was a little kid we had a variety of cats, then we got our boxer dog “Cassie” when I was about 6. Cassie was the most brilliant and faithful and protective dog you could imagine for a kid. Unfortunately, she got cancer really bad and was put down… on the afternoon of my final year school ball (prom for you Americans). I was absolutely devastated, and so I can’t remember much of that night, the one and only school ball I attended. As an adult, I had a beautiful cat called Anouschka for 17 years. She left this earth in 1995, and I still get emotional when I think about her. She lived with me in all sorts of places, except Canada.
2. I worked as a teacher librarian in Western Australian high schools for a heap of years before getting into the computer software industry and technical writing. I was a state finalist in the Young Australian of the Year awards for my contribution to teacher-librarianship. That same year, one of the winners was Barry Marshall, who went on to win a Nobel prize for Medicine in 2005. (I only know this because when we were purging to move house recently, I came across the folder with my certificate and the list of winners for that year!)
3. I went on teacher exchange to Ontario, Canada for a year. It was one of the best and most amazing years of my life. I saw and did so many things, met so many people, and just had a blast despite being paid in Aussie dollars while living in expensive Canada. I didn’t eat meat all year because it was too expensive, but I travelled everywhere and took thousands of (non-digital) photos – something about priorities!
4. I was dux of my small country primary school, and got into the 92nd percentile when I sat Princeton University’s GMAT exam for entrance to an MBA program anywhere in the world. I never did an MBA.
5. I learned classical piano when I was a kid, and gave it up when I was 15. I had a piano for many years, giving it to my niece when she won a music scholarship to a private school in Perth. I’d like to play again, but this time I’d get a digital piano with headphones so no-one has to hear how rusty I am!
6. My nephew plays AFL football. (AFL = Australia Football League, the great national game of Aussie Rules!)
7. I tried to jump out of a plane once. Reason: To cure myself of a fear of heights. Did it work? No. I couldn’t get over that half inch between being in the plane and being out of it! I’m also terrified of large hairy spiders, though I can kill a redback really easily. Go figure…
8. I get altitude sickness. It first showed up when I was trekking in Nepal, and I went into some sort of hyperventilating shock at 4000 metres. I’ve had small instances since then at places like Bryce Canyon (8000 ft) where I get an almost instant pounding headache and breathlessness as soon as I do any activity greater than about 20 steps.

BTW, none of these items are in any sort of order – I wrote them down as they came to me. Now, who shall *I* tag??? Let’s try these:

• Oh! What will this year bring?
• Connected Content
• Helpstuff
• Impressive
• BunRabbit
• Mardahl
• I’d Rather be Writing
• The Food Pornographer (it’s OK- she only takes pictures of, and writes about, food!)

Over to you…

So here I am in Perth, at my hairdresser’s. He’s finished the cut and colour and is now doing the wash out and rinse. But the water is COLD – freezing in fact! Enough to turn my toes. *I* think the hot water system has carked it, so ask him to turn off the cold to see what happens… and it gets even colder! Then he remembers that the plumber was here yesterday and realises that the taps are now round the wrong way…

Lucky he spends most of his time cutting! He’d lose customers if he was always responsible for the shampooing. And he’s lucky I’ve been going to him for a VERY long time and was prepared to forgive him.

Did I mention that it’s winter and was 4C overnight in Perth last night?? A cold wet head at 6pm is NOT what I wanted!