From The Road

I'm on the road, or more correctly rails, today, heading from Melbourne to a hopefully slightly warmer Albury.

At work we have recently started purchasing wireless cards for our users when they are out of the office, most commonly in remote locations. Completely out of the kindness of my heart I offered to sacrifice my three hour train ride to testing the speed and reliability of one such card while travelling through more remote regions of Victoria. With the work side of things out of the way (I checked my e-mail :D ) I've decided some more demanding tests are called for. Today I shall be testing Telstra's Next-G offering:

G-mail - No one loves me
Blogger - Guess we'll find out when / if this publishes
Google Docs - Successfully downloaded a spreadsheet
*cough* YouTube *cough* - Check
Instant Messenger - I started a chat but either got disconnected or Baker hates me
Mapping - Here I am
Facebook - A couple of time-outs but eventual success
Google Reader - 161 Items Synced

Overall a very usable solution for the Web2.0 road warrior. Apart from some random disconnections when the train was hoofing it (B said it earlier in the week and its stuck in my head), the speed can't really be faulted. While I wouldn't advise heavy usage (the price is ridiculous for the download limit) or relying on it while moving, it's definitely useful for jumping online when your on the road, rail or steam-powered ornithopter. Next time 3mobile... if no one at work reads this ;)

I Love It And That Makes It Real

I first stumbled across the lexicographer Erin McKean when perusing Pop!Casts. I've just finished watching her TED talk from earlier this year and thought I might share it with anyone who can spare 20 minutes and a bit of bandwidth. In particular this one is for Angus whom shares a similar passion for words.

According to Erin, if I love the word smoil enough (which I do) than that makes it real. Hurray!!

Some Final Thoughts On Phuket

Things are starting to settle back to normality and so it is well past time to share some lasting impressions from our trip to Phuket. In the interest of succinctness I will now attempt to condense my thoughts into a few points:

• Phuket = Beautiful
  
• Patong Beach
• Very tourist orientated
• Restaurants on the beach road are expensive
• Restaurants in alleys or a street back are cheap
• Never pay more than 50% from a stall
• Prepare to be hassled at every step by local spruikers
• If you want to browse, wait for someone else to grab the shopkeeper's attention and be quick
• Stay clear of Bangla Road if you wish to avoid the more colourful local culture, otherwise be ready to shake your head at the old men with young girls on their arms
• Phi-phi Island is well worth a tour, provided you take a speed boat
• Phuket-town doesn't have much additional to offer but if you want to
  
• Much respect to whoever maintains the power-lines
• Transferring cash is very easy and often the rate it better than that offered through a bank
  

Having popped my cherry (not in a Bangla Road way) I would definitely return to Phuket, and would recommend it to anyone looking to holiday somewhere exotic without necessarily leaving all the comforts of home behind. Well that's it I guess, the holiday's over. Time to return to early mornings and the freezing drizzle of Melbourne.

Home Again, Home Again

After a few disappointing connectivity days we are yet again at the Singapore Airport. For those of you whom have not yet found my Flickr account, you can finally see some photos from the trip at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adselwood/

Since my last post we have visited another island or two, taken a ride on elephants, gotten ourselves lost in Phuket Town and eaten Vegetarian in Little India. All in all it's been a busy but rewarding trip, and although I wouldn't say no to another week or two doing nothing, I am looking forward to getting home and returning to some form of normality.

I've got a decent flight ahead of me in a couple of hours, so I might try and get some thoughts down about Thailand while they're still fresh but in the meantime try not to laugh too hard at the awful photos I took.

See you all shortly,

Adam

Sawasdee Krap

Sawasdee krap, or hello from Phuket. I'd have written earlier but I only figured out how to hack the wi-fi this morning. It's around 5pm here and a very nice 27 degrees or so. Housekeeping has just popped in to fluff the pillows and I'm sitting on the balcony sipping my first post Monday hangover scotch.

Needless to say, the trip thus far has been a mixture of relaxation and self-inflicted damage. The hotel we are staying at, Ban Thai Resort, is excellent, although almost everything extra is overpriced to the hilt. Location wise it is pretty much perfect, situated in the middle of Patong Beach surrounded by street stalls, restaurants, bars and anything else the western tourist could ask for. The drawback to this is that you can't walk outside the hotel without being accosted by 'g-day mate', 'need a suit mate?' and 'tuk-tuk?' at every step.

The food here is a treat, with a large meal of fresh seafood costing less than $20. This has been awesome for me, but Brooke is none too keen on the affect the local spices is having on my breath. Shopping is also good once you get past the aggressive sales technique, though being such a heavy tourist area you have to bargain a fair bit to get things down to a reasonable price. The rule of thumb around here is not to pay more than 50%. The night life too is a bit of an experience, with the main bar strip kicking into gear around 7-8pm. The bar culture has been a bit of a surprise, particularly for Brooke, with the majority of the staff consisting of 'bar girls' encouraging you to purchase more than just drinks from them.

The days have been highly varied so far. Saturday was a bit of a write off after the 10+ hours of travel. Sunday was spent learning the lay of the land, or trying too, and relaxing as best we could. Monday was spent recovering from Sunday night, no more Chang's Beer for me thanks. Yesterday we went on a day trip to Phi-Phi Island and spent the day snorkeling, feeding monkeys and trying to limit the amount of sun burn that resulted. Finally, today has been a combination of relaxing by the pool and laying in bed with the air con flat out watching movies.

Tomorrow we are taking another island trip with some canoeing and elephants thrown in for good measure. It seems like I've been here for longer than three days, but I'm looking forward to the remainder of the trip. I think I may have finally hit relax mode today, but I'm not entirely sure. I should probably better get back to it just to check. I will try and get some photos up, but the one thing about hacked Internet is it's unreliable nature when it comes to uploading anything of substance.

Watch this space for more posts when I get time.

Greeting From Singapore

It's begun. Just hit Singapore airport and figured I'd take the opportunity to recharge my laptop and hit the net (yeah I'm a geek, get over it). The flight to here was good, one good movie, one bad, the time kinda flew. I'm still fairly pumped and bouncing around, much to the distaste of my travelling partners, and looking forward to the final leg in half an hour or so. I don't know how much time I'll get to upload photos / blog, but I don't think I'll be able to resist the siren song for too long.
That might do it for now, I wouldn't want to turn into Westra. I'm sure I'd look horrendous with long hair.

From Then Till Now

Well its been a while, and quite and eventful while at that. Following are some of the dates that standout from between my last post and now:

October 29, 2006: The 50th Wedding Anniversory

The last time I posted here I was rambling on about my upcoming trip back to Wangaratta. As it was almost three months ago it's hard to remember details, I do recall not being recognised by two thirds of my extended family, which was kinda fun, and making minimal use of the 'B Factor'.

November 17th, 2006: Baz Pays a Visit

Its always great to catch up with mates and when Baz said told me of his plans to visit for a couple of days I was ready to rock. He turned up a bit sick but still up for a laugh as his mode of transport, the 'Lil Mac', clearly showed. I cant imagine how painful the 3 hour drive in that thing must have been, but props to him for making the effort.
Keen to relive the days of ol', we spent much of the visit gorging on pizza, playing Starwars Lego and watching the A-Team. Surprisingly it was the A-Team that stood out, pure awesomeness! We also made it outside at one point to check out the eGames & Entertainment Expo in the city and I got my first taste of the Nintendo Wii.

November 25th, 2006: Maddy Flys Out

One final lunch with the family before my youngest sister flew out to Italy for a couple of months. Before this though I was asked to track down a few Australian souvenirs to send over with her. After half an hour checking out various Australiana shops with little to no luck I gave in and purchased a bunch of magnets, badges, pencils, etc. covered in Australian icons from the first Asian bulk supply chain I could find. We just had to spend the next half an hour or so removing the 'Made in China' stickers.

December 1st-7th, 2006: The Migration

My work had been relying on several Novell Netware servers for the majority of the IT Infrastructure for over 10 years, and it was definitely beginning to show. Network slowness, corruption, lost hours waiting for the main file server to come back online and the knowledge that someday soon it may not come back all contributed to a decision to move away from these crusty old machines. Starting at 7:30am and working through till after midnight several days running had all the systems migrated over to Microsoft. Whether or not this was a good thing is still unclear but at least I scored 3 days off from it all.

December 8th, 2006: Wii!!!

Wii release day was the 7th and thus I took my first 'recover from the migration' day off on the 8th. The glorious new Nintendo console kept me company throughout the day, quickly turning my shirt to a sweat drenched mess and my muscles to pudding. I still managed to pwn Angus and Trav when the turned up later in the arvo though.

December 22nd, 2006: Back to Wang

With work's breakup party the day before, I wasn't terribly excited with the prospect of driving back to Wangaratta and then onto Bundalong. Fortunately the heat and extremely slow service at the Beachcomber in St Kilda meant I didn't completely write myself off at the breakup and thus the 3 or so hour drive wasn't that painful. We stopped in at mum and dad's to drop off some presents and then headed over to B's parents to spend the night. Over the next couple of days I learnt how to kneeboard, as well as how not to kneeboard, and relaxed as much as possible. I also spent much of the remaining time mediating between B and mum. I'm not sure why but it seems impossible to get those two in the same room.

December 25th, 2006: Xmas

Ate too much and exchanged presents, the ate too much again.

January 1st, 2007: New Years

With not a whole lot happening in the North East, I decided to take my spare time and head back down to Melbourne spend bring the new year in with some mates. Having poor past experiences with New Years in the past we decided a low key evening at my place would make a nice change. Angus, Trav, Xave and a couple of Xave's friends made an appearance and helped make the night a perfect cap to an otherwise stressful year. Cheers fellas.

January 3rd, 2007: Back to Work

Back to 6:30am wake-ups and angry users. The first week or so wasn't too bad as most staff didn't return till the 10th, but there were just enough to keep the distractions constant.

January 4th, 2007: A New Project

Finally, I have begun work on a new website. I may even get paid for this one. The more often I work on these things the easier they become and at this stage I am pretty stoked with how this one is progressing. I just hope the client agrees.

The Long Ride Home & The B Factor

I'm heading home this weekend, back to Wangaratta. I quite enjoy visiting my old stomping grounds and look forward to catching up with everyone I haven't seen for months. As with most things though, a little bit goes a long way. I can pretty much guarantee that by half way through the trip I will have had enough of answering the 'hows work / B / the house / the drive?' questions and begin dreaming of the excitement filled 3 hour return drive to Melbourne. Luckily I have a few distractions up my sleeve for when things get out of hand; teaching Jacob the finer point of Linux on his new laptop, the DS, the eternal nothings of my mind and of course the 'B Factor'.
As much as I hate the 'B Factor' most of the time, the odd occasions where it is useful almost make it all worthwhile. You see for whatever reason, my better half finds it hard to extended periods around my family. Coming from a small family, it is understandable that the large crowds of my upbringing can be scary to the untrained, but sometimes I just wish she could get over her fears and deal with it. That is until it all becomes too much for me. Once a certain level of annoyance / frustration / tiredness begins to set in, it takes very little to bring the 'B Factor' into play. Announcing that B is tired, has to work in the morning or needs to do something urgently not only allows for a speedy exit but also provides a guilt free out for me.
I don't plan on having to implement the 'B Factor' (or should it be called the 'B Maneuver'), but I am pretty certain that come Sunday afternoon, the prospect of getting away will start sounding very attractive.

Smoking Is For Losers... Or Is It?

So I went out with B on Saturday night, totally burning a couple of friends in the process (sorry guys). These kinds of occasions don't often arise and typically without encouragement B will flake out and stay home feeling sorry for herself and expecting me to entertain her. Avoiding potential fallout and in the interest of improved well being we headed out to help celebrate one of her friend's birthday. We arrived at The Croft Institute around 10 and it quickly became apparent that apart from B and the birthday girl I wasn't going to know anyone. So I grabbed an ale and switch into polite thinking mode.

During the following hours my mind flitted from conversation to blank stare thought. One thing that struck me during this pondering was the number of smokers B's friend was friends with (how else would you put it?). Within my circle of friends there are few that I have ever seen puffing away and even then only when they are with others doing the same. I have always held a strong position against all forms of smoking, I have never tried it and cannot see why anyone would want to, however spending time in a group where smoking is not only accepted but common, I started to reconsider my stance on the subject.

Going over the arguments against smoking I quickly came up with the following:

• The numerous health factors, namely cancer,
  
• The god awful stench of smoke in the air, on your clothes and breath etc,
• The effects on others within close proximity,
• The cost,
• Addiction.
  

Consideration of this list lead me to the realisation that none of these reasons are new, e.g. pretty much everyone knows that these arguments exist and yet many still choose to poison themselves. Further thought lead me to compare smoking to beer drinking (as I do) and pretty soon I was aware that barring the direct effect on others, every single argument against smoking held true for drinking. Acknowledging this, I began to feel like a bit of a hypocrite due to my past opinions of and reactions to all smokers.

So where did this leave me? Had I up until now been preaching to people in much the same way as an animal activist with a new pair of leather shoes? Or was there some gray area that would let me continue relatively shame free? In the end I came to the conclusion that I had been unfair on a number of smokers, however there are some instances where I feel that my approach is justified. Unlike drinking, smoking can have a very direct impact of others in close proximity. I believe it to be not only unfair but rude to others if smoking around people that choose not to. Although you may have the right to choose to smoke, every non-smoker also has the right to fresh air. Anyone that believes they have a right to smoke when are where they want needs to pull there finger out of their arse and take a moment to consider those around them.

Not every smoker falls into this category, in fact I have met quite a few individuals that will quite happily move away either before lighting up or as soon as they are asked to. If working in a bar for years has taught me anything though, it is that many smokers do believe they have the right to smoke where ever they want and get pissed off if you suggest otherwise. In the end though, we all have the right to drink/smoke/eat whatever we fancy, and from now on I will be trying to respect the rights of smokers, provided they return the courtesy.

What's The Go With This Work Thing Then?

So I get into work this week coming off a cold and on the 7:30am early shift (read 5:30 am wake up). I have high hopes as my crappy job list is getting near the end and I am expecting to resolve a major problem at one of the site offices Monday morning when I go out first thing. I head out to the site office feeling pretty positive about the rest of my week and then BAM!! everything goes to shit. The reason I was making the early morning site visit was to meet with the vendor of the system we are having issues with, and in short order he informs me that an upgrade is needed before anything can be fixed. After some more investigation he proceeds to tell me that this upgrade will infact require a near complete rebuild of the local servers. Hurray!!
Traveling back from the site visit, I think about what needs to be done; organise and execute a complete rebuild of 4 servers at a remote site ASAP and with as little impact on users as possible. Upon conveying the sad news to my boss (the work one, not the home one), it soon becomes apparent that my hopes for the week are fading fast.
As the week progresses, the urgency and related workload increases and come Wednesday afternoon it is decided that the' upgrade' (read: MASSIVE REBUILD OPERATION) needs to take place this weekend. So now I am working the early shift all week, organising a weekend server rebuild, and hoping that we come across something that will force us to move the date back a week or so. Alas, here I am, 6:40 on a Friday night waiting for a backup to complete so that I can kick off the first stages of the preparation for tomorrow's exciting 6am (4:30 wakeup!) start.
Woe is me.

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