Life and Associated Annoyances – Page 7

Good News, Bad News

Bad News – The Data Centre that hosts our servers went down on Friday afternoon, meaning that everything for all of our clients was offline.

Good News – It wasn’t our fault.

Bad News – Our clients are unlikely to understand the distinction.

Good News – They got everything back up and running in a couple of hours.

Bad News – Except for one of our critical servers.

Good News – The critical server was up and running by Saturday evening.

Bad News – One of my esteemed colleagues – who I have to work with today – lost a big chunk of his weekend getting it back up, and will most likely be in the kind of mood that would make the Pope kick little children in the face.

Good News – I got to go home early on Friday.

Bad News – Having gone home early on Friday I don’t get paid as much.

Good News – I decided to catch the bus into the city rather than to Subiaco, and along Mounts Bay Road, just near the Eliza statue I spotted a fin poking out of the river. My first thought was “shark!” but then I realised the shape was wrong, and a flash of back and a puff of spray revealed it to be one of the Swan River dolphins. Awesome! I’ve never seen one of them before!

Then when I got home I had to time to do up a few more Snoos for the Warhammer subreddit’s Snoo contest. Which was a good thing, because the Eldar Farseer Snoo I put together ended up winning! 😀 It can now be seen on top of the subreddit, and the mods liked my work so much that I’ve been contracted to create a new Snoo each month for the forseeable future. In return I’ve been allocated the title of “Honored Artificer of the /r/warhammer Snoo” and awarded a $25 Games Workshop voucher, which is nothing to be sneezed at.

Bad News – The $25 voucher is in US Dollars and hence (apparently) can’t be used to buy anything from Australia.

Good News – GW has an excellent customer service reputation, so I’m confident that if I email them I’ll be able to get it sorted out.

That is all.

My Empire of Dirt

I’m having the kind of week where Trent Reznor lyrics are making sense to me.

On the upside I’ve been having fun designing new Snoos for the Warhammer subreddit…

More on Flickr

I’m doing my best to reserve judgement on the Flickr redesign, but now that I’ve had the time for a good look around, and more information on the future of the site is emerging, I’m shifting towards really disliking it.

The entire interface seems to have been shifted towards “look at all the pretty pictures!” while making it a pain in the arse to see any of the meta-information – titles, descriptions, dates, locations, etc – that might have been entered about said pretty pictures.

Now, I don’t use Flickr to show off pretty pictures, I use it to store and annotate photographs of things that I find interesting, and other people might find interesting too. Without the context of the meta-information, a lot of my photos are pointless, so the redesign has made the site a hell of lot less useful for me.

I’m not making any rash decisions yet, but I’ll be watching Flickr very carefully over the next couple of months to see if things improve. If not, I may well cancel my pro account, pull all my stuff down and find somewhere else to keep it.

Zoids!

Ha! Zoids!

As a kid my brother and I had the Malder, Molga, Aquadon, Elepantus and Gorgodos. I’m sure I’ve still got them somewhere. Maybe I should find them and put them on Ebay…

Status Update

Feeling tired, run down and depressed. Probably ate too much chocolate over Easter.

But hey, it’s Friday. With enough caffeine and Mates of State I should be able to make it to quitting time, then I can sleep all weekend.

(Ignore the Anime – Only decent version of the song I could find on Youtube)

Goodbye Telstra

On Friday my landline died. I called Telstra and was informed that the problem was at their end, and it would be fixed by Wednesday the 6th at the latest, free of charge.

Yesterday (the 6th), on getting home I found that my landline was still not fixed. I called Telstra to ask what was going on but the wait to speak to someone was estimated at 15 minutes, so I hung up and decided to call this morning at work.

I arrived at work and, literally as I picked up my mobile to call them I got an SMS informing me that ‘unfortunately’ the fix to my phone line has been rescheduled to Wednesday the 13th.

I am not going to rant. I am not going to rave. I am going to call Telstra up and calmly register my displeasure. Then, once my phone line is up and running again, I will be taking my business elsewhere. I will also be looking into what is required to register a complaint with the Telecommunications Ombudsman.

That is all.

Still Not King

Met up with Hobbits. Walked forty miles. Skinned a squirrel and ate it.
Still no Internet.

No TV and No Beer make Homer Something Something…

Got home on Friday night to discover that my landline was dead as the proverbial doornail. No internet all long weekend. Frankly it’s amazing I’m still alive.

Apparently Telstra are going to fix it either today or tomorrow. So they say at least. I ain’t exactly sanguine.

I did get some… stuff done though. Pictures will be posted when my home connection us back up and running, and my brain has recovered from going cold turkey.

Dagnabit!

Just took an extended lunch break to add a page for This is Jinsy to TV Tropes only to have TV Tropes eat it.

Dagnabit!

(Later: Went back and redid it this evening. Behold its majesty!)

Currently Making my Life Hell…

Imagine, if you will, that you’re a mechanic. Not the world’s greatest mechanic by any means, but a decent mechanic who earns a decent wage fixing and tuning cars and trucks.

One day you get a call from someone wanting you to come out and tune up their car. So you hop in your van and drive out to their address. On arrival however you discover that it’s not a car.

It’s this….

Before you have time to react, the Captain whacks a hat on your head, says “Welcome aboard! You’re our new Head Engineer!” and drags you down to the engine room.

Which looks like this…

Engine Room — Image by Bodvar Eggertsson

Mistaking your look of horror for one of mere concern, the captain says “Don’t worry, the manuals are right here…”

You pick up one of the decaying books at random and open it. Every single page looks like this…

The Captain continues “All set? Your tools are over there…”

“…and we think the forward port engine is about to fall off. Have fun!”

Through strenuous effort (and a lot of desperate banging on random pipes) you manage to keep the ship in the air. You even manage to accommodate some of the crew’s requests, such as restoring the air conditioning and halting the gradual detachment of the starboard mess hall. Buoyed by your apparent competence the crew send in a flood of new requests for things such as hot tubs and mood lighting, some of which you can manage and many of which you have to ignore.

Making matters worse, through all of this the Captain insists on a weekly meeting at Airship HQ in Zurich. Once a week you have to fly to Zurich and sit in a small room staring at a list of requests and upgrades. After about an hour the meeting is declared a success and you fly back to the airship to continue banging on pipes.

You find yourself entertaining thoughts of sabotaging the engines, or at least ignoring the more desperate maintenance tasks so the ship will fall out of the sky and (as long as you survive) you won’t have to deal with it any more. But your professionalism wins through, you take a deep breath and get on with tightening a valve that you think will correct the water pressure on deck three. Maybe.