Well, I'm posting consistently once every 16 months.
Good for me.

This post is not going to be the most noble of returns, but it's something that's annoying enough for me to get off my metaphorical arse and write something.

It's the Telstra NextG/GPRS Mobile broadband card I use for work. Or, to be more precise, the software for it. I love mobile broadband, but the connection monitoring software this thing uses is more painful than the BigPond website. And don't get me started on that.



First, the progress bar on the installation package (which is fullscreen and flashy) does not measure progress. The caption says 'Registering on the network', the bar goes up every few seconds in 5% increments (it shows the figures) and when it hits 100%...
"This page cannot be displayed".
Seriously.
It's counting down until the timeout runs out.
And there's no 'retry' button. Going back takes you back to selecting your card type so it can install the drivers. And if you go through that again, it stops responding. It took several painful minutes of restarting the install, interspersed with pulling out and replacing the card, to get the damn thing to work.

Then, once it's installed, things don't get better.
The connection tends to drop out a lot, and not tell you about it. It says it's still connected, but web pages don't load. So you click the 'disconnect' button, and it says 'Please wait...'
So you wait.
And wait.
And get frustrated enough to close the program, because it looks like it's stopped responding.
So you select 'Exit and turn off mobile card'.
It still says 'Please wait...'
You now have a choice. You can use task manager to kill the program, which may or may not result in you being able to reconnect when you restart it, or you can pull the card out and take your chances that way. This sometimes results in the program waking up, sometimes not. Sometimes when it wakes up, it will be able to reconnect, sometimes not.

Oh, and occasionally the program disconnects, but does nothing at all when you click 'connect' again. And then windows somehow forgets completely that the card is installed, and re-loads the drivers for it.

Now, it could be that it's all my fault because the I just haven't given the program enough time to shut down the card before I get impatient. But I ask you, how long is a reasonable time to turn off what is essentially a cut-down mobile phone with a PCMCIA interface? Phones can turn off in under a second. More than a minute is ridiculous.

Okay I've timed it. 41 seconds to disconnect, and another 91 seconds to quit the program.
A minute and a half to close the program. With no feedback.
Telstra UX designers out there, take note.

Hah! I've just re-opened the program so I can post this, and it says "Please re-insert your Next G device".
This is beta quality software at best, and yet it's version 2.10.6.

The installer and the program itself are very pretty, fairly well-designed, and would be great if they worked properly. But they don't. Get your act together, Telstra.

Wow, that last post is from November 2005.
How neglectful.
Anyway, I hope to keep the blog up this year, as I've just got my own place in Sydney and ADSL2. Whooee it's fast.
It feels good to be connected again, after a year in Darwin. Where I was living ADSL wasn't available and I wasn't going to pay several hundred $ to have a phone line hooked up to get 56k. Eventually I went with a Telstra MiniMax wireless connection, but that cost $99 a month for 50 hours. It didn't have a dl limit, which was nice, but you can't do that much in 50 hrs anyway.
My desktop's carking it at the moment, it's a hardware problem I think. Darwin just eats computers alive. Can't decide whether to upgrade my notebook and turf my desktop or what, cos I want a decent amount of storage available. The external hard drive cases I got to hook up to my notebook have caused nothing but trouble. Bloody failed writes and not shutting down with the comp and all sorts of crashes.
I was going to keep the desktop as a fileserver / torrent dl'er, but it's not cooperating so I might just junk it and work something else out. Also, at ADSL2 speed you don't need to leave things downloading overnight or while you're out because you'll chew through your quota in a day. Couldn't survive on 64k for the rest of the month.

Check out xkcd.com. It's great.

I Hate Trophies

I hate the idea of people displaying useless objects whose only function is to say "Look how good I am - look what I did," to everyone, most of all themselves.
Hunting trophies, sports trophies, hell - even diplomas framed and displayed.
If you don't know your worth without narcissistic reminders, you may have a self-esteem problem. I don't want to be defined by a shelf full of platitudes.

Then I look at what's on my shelf, and I realise that my trophies are books.
Jesus - even DVDs.
"This is what has been pumped through my head."
"This is what resonates with my mind."
Fuck.
"This is me."
I don't leave behind books I don't like because I think I won't read them again (though I won't) or keep ones I like because I think I will (though I do). (Wow 9 I's in that sentence. Who's the narcissist?) I keep or discard books based on whether what was in them has become a part of me. Or if I just haven't gotten around to reading them yet.

I can be as smug as I want labelling myself as unlabellable, and yet all I have to do is look at the shelf above my desk to find an autobiographical summary that's both shorter and longer than most any book you'd care to name.

Is that profound? Tell me that's profound?

I'm fighting the urge to point out that last line is supposed to be ironic.
And losing.
I guess that one cuts too close.

And no, I'm not about to throw out my diplomas, my old awards or my books. Fuck off.
Go read a book.

When the chips are down

IMGP3196
Originally uploaded by Fush.

I like this photo.
It shows the futility of trying to see yourself from the outside. All you get is a distorted, blurry picture of what you might look like, and lose all perspective on what you are doing. Meanwhile, everyone else fades into the background and becomes unrecognisable.

Or maybe it just shows why you should hold the camera steady if you're not using a flash.

That's me on the right - I'm holding the camera. Then it's Craig, Aida, and I think a bit of Bec's foot. Around an improvised poker table.

See the joke?

See the joke?
Originally uploaded by Fush.

Craig and his Crab

22nd bday1
Originally uploaded by Fush.

Sorry Craigus, but this photo's just too good not to share with the world.
And it serves to test the link between flickr and blogger, so it's useful too.

Snickle Dippenfricken

Software integration testing...

Just experimenting at the moment - I've installed Flock and I'm trying to integrate it with Flickr. We'll see if it works.

Nope. The Flickr topbar won't load my photos. Damn it.