Res Publica

Gone

To a different place.

That's it - Blog Off

Sometime in the next few weeks my annual subscription to Typepad comes up for renewal but after something like 570 posts I'm all blogged out.  In between possibly changing jobs in the next few months and moving to Brisbane after Xmas I'm really not going to have the time to devote much attention to blogging in any case.  So I'm going to let my subscription lapse.  I've got a new credit card so the renewal process will trip over and I presume Six Apart will ultimately reclaim the hard disk space.  Blogging has become harder because of time pressures and lack of web access at work and I'm also heartily fed up with the special delayed action backspace facility in the compose editor since Typepad upgraded the software.

I've 'met' some great people and I shall continue to follow a few of my favourite blogs.  It's been fun but it's time to move on.  As Irish comedian Dave Allen used to say, "Goodnight, thank you and may your God go with you !"

Resolution Resolved

Good job we got the new screen at a good price because I hadn't really banked on having to spend $150 on a graphics card to get the resolution right, some fancy MSI card with a cooling pipe or some-such and a lot of extra memory which has generally improved the performance of the computer.  Very strangely I had no trouble installing it, the software loaded with no issues and it has worked like a charm, most odd and definitely not my usual hi-tech experience.  Now I'll have to buy some expensive graphics heavy computer games to take full advantage of the new capabilities.

Goodbye CRT, Hello LCD

Don't you just love getting a tax return - here's what we spent part of ours on, a new Samsung 2243BWX LCD monitor.  There was nothing actually wrong with the old one, a Dell 17" which must now be close to 8 years old but we just felt like spoiling ourselves (and our deteriorating eyesight !).  The Handbrake will gladly tell you I've been agonising about this for a few months and finally weakened on Saturday.

Nothing's simple though is it ?  Since I plugged it in I've been struggling with getting the resolution correct and it would appear that our Intel graphics card can't emulate the optimum recommended 1600 x 1050 resolution of the screen which is doing  odd things to some of the fonts although the xtra size easily compensates for that.  I'll have to wrestle with that problem a bit longer unless someone can suggest an easy fix.  We're currently using a 1450 x 1050 setting, none of the available options letting us get close to the ideal.

Not So Special

QANTAS cycles through a range of Kellog's breakfast cereals, dished up in single serve bowls.  On Friday's early flight from Townsville to Brisbane it was the turn of Special K.  Milk doesn't sit well with me, maybe lactose intolerance (?), so I only use it sparingly which allows me to fully savour the texture and taste of the cereal of the moment.   After much reflection, I'm prompted to ask exactly what is so special about Special K ?  True to form, it tasted like sweetened, crisp cardboard, nothing more, nothing less.  I conclude that there is absolutely nothing special about Special K. Just another marketing con job.

Not much different to the two-slice toaster we saw in Woolworths today - as if anyone would be stupid enough to buy a single slice toaster these days.

Last night on TV there was an advert for mattresses with gussetted pillowtops.  What the hell is a gussetted pillowtop ?

QANTAS Report Card

Geoff Dixon, QANTAS boss, reckons that the airline hasn't taken its eye off the ball when it comes to maintenance and customer service.  In that case I'll just assume that non-working reading lights (recent score 1 working out of 3) and dodgy headphones with only one side working and scratchy soundtracks and persistently late flights from Brisbane to Townsville are system aberrations or I'm just plain unlucky.  They're only little things but I suspect they're symptomatic of a problem.

Double Billing

Remember I had a whinge about Telstra's failed attempt to send us a single bill a short while ago ?  Back home from work I ploughed through the usual pile of correspondence to find a Broadband bill from Telstra.  We now appear to have advanced from getting a 'single' bill sent in two parts to two different addresses to getting a single bill sent in two parts to the same address (one electronically, one on paper) - which isn't really very far from where we started out.  We'll get there eventually I hope.

Class Action

When I finally got back home after my extended stint at work there was a cheque awaiting me, all of $307 worth.  Never look a gift horse in the mouth they say, but this was the proceeds from my joining the class action against the administrators of the Sons of Gwalia collapse.  It's taken a small eternity and numerous court hearings but finally it's pay day - although it's not exactly compensating me for the original $4,358 outlay - another crap investment.

The last paragraph of the letter from IMF Australia, the legal team which drove the class action, states, 'Each of you is a little piece of history in as much as this is the first time in any common law country, that shareholders have been treated as creditors and have been able to recover some of their lost funds in common with all other creditors of the company in question.'

Nice, pity about the 4 grand though.

Single Bill

No, that's not some lonely chap looking for a girlfriend it's Telstra's attempt to reduce paperwork and simplify its accounting, seemingly at the expense of customer satisfaction.

A couple of months back they sent me a fancy deed of novation by which I could sign over responsibility for the Bigpond broadband account to the Dear Handbrake who was already the account holder for our land-line phone and our two mobiles.  It obviously wasn't enough for us both to talk to a customer service operator and just tell them to do it, no, we had to fill in a three page form and get witnessed signatures.  If we didn't do this they indicated that we would no longer be eligible for our rewards option(s) which include us phoning each other for 20 minutes at cheap rates between 7 and 8 at night.  The form was duly signed and off it went.

A few days ago we receieved a letter redirected from a few houses up the road with the new Broadband bill in the Dear Handbrake's name but with the wrong address.  I may have an overly simplistic view of some things but how on earth can it be a single bill if one part of it goes to a different address ?  Telstra never ceases to amaze me.  If it's OK to send part of a single bill to a different address, I'm left wondering if they'd be equally happy to send part of it to a different person at the same address.  Hang on, isn't that where this all started ?

Mundane Things

I seem to be too busy to blog these days, work is madness and I'm only really fit to vegetate and watch Home and Away by the time I get back to my donga in the evenings.  Some of  the less mundane moments in life over the last couple of weeks have been:

• Being rejected for an informal application I'd put in to work in Vietnam.
• Having to reload a lot of useful programs onto the new lap-top work has given me because the old one started to die and losing most of my music files in the process.
• Having to put up with my new lap-top regularly telling me my fingerprint scan is not good enough - mainly because it's my right palm anyway and I'd love to deactivate the security doo-dad thing but don't know how.  Who'd put the fingerprint scan thingy right where you rest your hand, anyway ?
• Not being impressed by Firefox 3 which has bought back memories of Office 2007 which I still hate.
• Having to go back to work after only a 2 day break,
• and getting my shaving gel taken off me at Brisbane international airport security because it exceeded 100 ml (175 ml and half used) which left me wondering why they don't make the same fuss at the domestic terminal especially since I was only going to Cairns anyway, not forgetting of course that the 9/11 terrorists were on domestic flights....