Author: awmalloyadmin

Unlike Daniel I’ve never had to take the Age on the train with me, it’s always been a spread out over the table paper for me, but I’m looking forward to the new ‘premium compact’ (ie tabloid) size of The Age. We have a very large table but it’s still an issue every morning if Rae and the kids want to eat breakfast at the same time of me.

Being somewhat of a traditionalist I’ll miss The Age’s broadsheet format during the week, it’s a little piece of history slipping away. I’ll await the new format with great interest on Monday. I wonder if the new size will arrest my move towards reading it on a tablet.

On Friday I noticed a Telstra van pull up out the front of the next door neighbour. The tech guy hopped out, opened up the pit and started to work. Then my internet and phone line dropped out.

I went out to ask what was happening and he looked bemused. He said he was working on another person’s house, nothing to do with ours. I told him I had no phone line, and thus no net. He looked harried and dialled my number from the pit. “It’s dialling, nothing I did caused the problem.” and with that he packed up and left, telling me to call faults. I rang my number – it rang and rang on the mobile – but no ringing inside, no dial tone when I picked up the phone and no net connection.

Obviously it must have been the world’s biggest coincidence that my phone line disconnected itself by accident at the exact same time Mr Rude Technician was working in the pit outside my house. A Telstra rep on Twitter even told me the tech must know what he’s talking about and to contact faults. Yeah. Right.

So we’ve been without a phone for a couple of days, which is no biggy, but not having the net makes it very difficult for me to make a living. Thankfully I have a great mother in law. She had an old USB modem from an old plan she was on that has a few gig of bandwidth on it. The modem doesn’t work but Android to the rescue. I’ve plugged her SIM in to my phone, set it up as a mobile hotspot and have some sort of connection to get me through. Telstra have promised to have the problem fixed by close of business on Monday so this temporary measure should be able to get me through.

Lessons learnt :

• Don’t trust a Telstra tech to know his stuff
• Android phones rock.
• Never throw away old SIM cards
• Marrying the right woman has many unforseen benefits

Today Daniel posted about pre-1967 street signs that used the UK-style Postal District Numbers. It reminded me a little discovery I made in Flemington last year, It’s still mainly intact. It’s sad to think that one day a council will decide it needs replacing so someone will come along, take this little bit of history down and throw it in the back of a truck to be disposed of.

Dropping Bert off this morning, rounded the corner and was stunned – every tree in the street was covered in cockatoos. Not just one or two per tree; every tree was covered and more were swarming around, one even pecking away at a car.

I really can’t believe it. The twins started school today; it’s empty house time during the day after 7 years of little feet running around, fighting, laughing and filling the house with kid energy.

We’ve only just dropped them off. They both seemed a little bewildered but Henry was more than happy to sit by himself and draw a picture while I took Moo off to look at her room. They both saw their friends from kinder on the way in which made them happy and their teachers seem lovely.

Now I can’t wait to pick them up to see how they went. While I can now have full days to work I’m going to miss them. A lot.

I realised the other day I’ve lost my sense of adventure. It dawned on me in an odd manner too. I’ve been looking at the new Kindle Paper White but finances haven’t allowed for one. A contributor on Ozbargain came to my rescue detailing a way to have one sent from Japan via a forwarding agent that would have been at a considerable saving. Reading the instructions I saw one tiny tricky, not even difficult, bit and immediately thought ‘oh, that could go wrong, won’t bother’.

When did this start? When did I become so risk averse that possibly entering the wrong prefecture stopped me from ordering a cool toy from Japan?

I realised then, as i looked at the project I was working on that I’m still using approaches and technology from five years ago because I know they work. Sure ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ but tech moves at a lightning pace and I’m missing out on some benefits of new ways just to be safe.

To try and stop me turning in to absolute dinosaur I’m going to teach myself a new programming language, from scratch, by June. In the old days, before kids, mortgages and running my own business this would have been a much shorter term project and I’m going to have carve out time from a pretty busy schedule to to do this but in five months time I want to have achieved something new. And if I do I will buy myself that Kindle. From Japan.

I’d love to have a lazy Sunday morning read on my bed but…

I wrote recently about how much I love baking. Well, my lovely wife must have been reading because she bought me an amazing present from the book club at work. Of course she hasn’t been in to work since it arrived so many thanks to Leah for delivering my new pride and joy.

Now I really have to start saving for a proper mixer.

A letter from Lego would have been my dream as a kid.

I can complete my TIE Fighter now.