You can ask anyone, I’m not usually one to pick up a book, and it’s even more unlikely that I’d be caught reading one.  In fact over the last year, apart from daily reads of websites (which often contain relatively large stories/articles), and various tech (read: geek) books, the only books I’ve read are:

• Tucker Max - I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell…
• Maddox - The Alphabet of Manliness

In the last ten days I’ve doubled this, and now I’m onto my third book.  This is amazing because, as we’ve already estabilished, I don’t read, so it takes something unusual to break the literary drought.  And I’ve definitely that something I think.  Lee Child’s alter ego Jack Reacher is just about the most interesting character I’ve ever read about, which tells me a) Child write’s f*&king good books, or b) I’m uncultured and haven’t read anywhere near enough books.  I’ll go with option a, because I know how cultured and cool I am.

So far, I’ve read too of Child’s books, One Shot, and Bad Luck and Trouble, which kept me glued from start to finish.  The former is about a seemingly random mass murder in Indiana by a trained sniper where the crime is completely faked and made to look like it was a retired army Marine who did the shooting, and the victim’s weren’t all completely random (shock horror).  The latter involves half of Reacher’s old Army group getting killed for uncovering a plot to ship new U.S missile technology to terrorists and Reacher meets up with the remaining four members of the group to bring justice to those taken down.  As usual, weapons, money and a whole lot of violence is involved.

One thing I really liked about the first book (that I didn’t notice as much in the second) is that the whole book plays out almost exactly like a Law and Order episode.  I’m a Law and Order nut, if its on I’ll watch it, and even episodes I’ve seen before rate pretty high on the re-watchability scale (as long as they’re not watched in close succession).  Apart from the abomination that was Trial By Jury, or Justice By Jury (something like that), I’ve liked pretty much every episode that I’ve watched in the past 18 series the original show has been running.  And I appreciated that about One Shot.  It plays out like any cop/military drama, and it keeps interest the whole time.

I’d had Lee Child recommended to me recently, and by coincidence, the newspaper The Evening Standard happened to have a free copy if you bought a copy of the paper.  So I guess advertising works, as I’ll now probably continue and buy the rest of his books, starting from the first of the series of course.

Anybody want to recommend me some good reading?

My new Laptop, a Dell Vostro 1700 arrived on Tuesday, and its more than a worthy replacement for my ageing Latitude.  I might even go as far as to say its the perfect notebook, for the person who doesn’t need to take their machine to work with them every day.  The only reason I say that is because its big, and really heavy as well (I’d estimate 4kg).

But for a round-the-house desktop replacement, media and occasional gaming machine, its perfect, and cheap too!

I got:

• Core2Duo 9500 (2.5Ghz)
• 4GB RAM
• nVidia 8600GM
• 2×200GB 7200RPM HDD’s
• Intel Wireless Draft-n card
• 17″ 1920×1200 WUXGA+ Monitor

Plus all the throw in options (Vista, MS Office, Bluetooth Headset, etc etc)

For £895!

Once again, I put it to anyone to find a similar spec’d machine for anywhere near this price because Dell definitely seems to have the upper hand in these stakes.

Well, as of a few days ago, Curious Perversions in the UK - CPITUK (or at least where it was formally based, http://kwiksand.wordpress.com) is now a year old, and after 12,000 unique (10,500 since September and HD911’s birth) , I’m roaring and ready to increase that by a factor of 10x in the coming 12 months.  Though, as before this depends on a whole bunch of things, the main one being that I actually write something interesting and worth reading.  But I’m committed to acheiving this, so stay tuned for more Shan-anigans as we go along.

The 10,000th Brick

Interestingly enough though:

• This site is almost a year old now;
• We arrived in the UK a year ago (shock horror); and
• I’m getting married on the anniversary being here a year

The Past Twelve Months

But it’s also probably a good idea to look back and reflect on what CPITUK has become, whether or not that progression matches my original intentions when I started it or not.  I guess the driving force behind writing in the first place was to give friends back home some insight as to what is going on in the saga that is Shannon.  As well as this, I wanted a humorous (I’m giving myself too much credit) critique regarding every day life in London and the UK.

I think for the most part, I’ve kept to this general rule, and the mortar between the bricks has been filled talking cod shit (possibly too much filler for this many bricks in the wall, me thinks).  We’ve definitely seen what London has to offer though, and that really makes me think its the second best city in the world (behind Tehran of course).  On the topic of Life and Living in the UK, I’ve covered:

• Work/Contracting
• Tax
• Money and pain/sweetness that is the Aussie Dollar to Pound
• Visa and Immigration
• Alcohol
• The public transport system (more importantly tube closures.

.. to name a few.  But there’s so much untouched ground, so many worthy stories that haven’t found their way to the printing press, and some never will.  But you never know, I’ve been working on a piece of late about the stripper (darling she was), who just wouldn’t leave, despite aggression, threats and a body slam from a rather small human.  Got to hand it to her, she must have had whatever the energiser bunny is on.

The Next Twelve Months

Stay Tuned for:

• more (hopefully) interesting stuff
• much more cod shit
• photo diary style entries of holiday’s abroad, or perhaps weekends at home
• new sections for the site
• the emergence of ShanCo, whenevet it happens

Now lets just see whether I can get that bricks to mortar ratio right.

“If you build it, they will come” - And look where Kevin Costner is now, that’s somethign to aspire to.

A weird question to start with, to be sure, and although I talk to myself an awful lot (possibly more than is healthy) I wouldn’t ever need to ask myself that question.  So now, I’m not suddenly suffereing from Gender disassociativeness nor have I become separted from my racial/special (is that a word?) roots like the mental/medical condition where people ‘disown’ parts of their body and occasionally even amptutate the alien part (I wish I could remember the name of it).  No, I’ll leave the body mutilation for another week, I really asked this question after a recent conversation with a work mate.

It was one morning this week and said colleague had been asked by the big wigs over at Ché Le Corporate to get a list of all employees and their accompanying Job Titles from the Nike Wallet Processing Plant (that is, my office).  The conversation went a little like this:

“Hey, what do you want your job title to be, I’ve been asked to get a list of everyone and their job titles.  I’ve put down System Administrator for you for the time being”

Hearing this stopped me dead in my tracks, “System Administrator I thought, What have I got myself into?”.  By no fault of my colleague at all, he’d pointed out something that was now blatently clear to me.  My recent change in jobs has changed me from a budding developer (working on a relatively deadend project, but still a developer nonetheless), to kind of a Network/Tech/Administrator guy.

Now, the Network and Tech part of that, I don’t mind, the server hardware & network and linux setup part of the computer world is something I’ve always been interested in.  But the Systems and Administrator part is what scares me, for no one worth their grain of salt (I hope thats me) aspires to be a System Administrator, it really is a glorified helpdesk position, and now I have to watch my step carefully, so as not to fall into the role that is the scorn of the whole IT profession.  I continue down this parth, and soon enough, I’ll be the general office go to guy:

• the guy who handles helpdesk and support requests
• the guy who manages such petty things as network and email accounts
• the guy who answers the phone… often; and worst of all
• the guy who is expected to order stationary, water and toilet paper

Thankfully, none of these things can or will ever apply to me, I’d sooner quit my job, move back to Australia and hammer my tongue/foot/penis flat enough to fit into a standard paper shredder if only for the joy of it.

So now everyone, I am on a journey of rediscovery, to make sure I still continue on the path to greatness, despite my sudden change in job descriptions.  Thus, once again, I’ll ask:

Who/What Am I?

This has me really thinking about exactly what I want from career, as even though I’m still relatively new in this game, I can already see that what I wanted 5 years ago (a job…) is far different than the goal I have now.  But thats the way life should be, if I’d had it the way I wanted it when I was 5 I’d be a cop, an astronaut or a gynaecoligist (ech…) right now, and all three I am not.

But really, whats in a title? It’s what you make of it, and if I don’t want to be the Bastard Operator From Hell, I won’t be, despite how much fun it could be.  So I’ll make what I can of this period, see how it goes.

I came home the other night to a partially dead laptop.  The power adapter (brick) refused to react to being plugged into the power (the light wasn’t turning on and it was emitting a rather funny smell), so I’d think it was a power surge.  The only problem was, I got a replacement charger/battery and the problems didn’t stop there.  The screen (whilst displaying a perfect picture) flickers and can’t draw the screen fast enough, so whilst I can still type on it (like now) and use it for email, it’s pretty much useless for any other task.

The screen looks like an old 40’s reel-tape movie/video with the flicker every second or so and what looks like dust flecks in the corners, like an old, pre World War II Donald Duck Cartoon:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG3R3rMu12E[/youtube]

I’m sure there was an older pre-war video somewhere

But seriously, I’m now confronted by the situation where I can pay to get this laptop repaired, which I’d estimate at about £150, or order a new laptop on Higher Purchase via Dell, both of which I really shouldn’t be considering as money is tight at the moment with everything coming up!  But whats a little more debt on top of the pile?

A couple of years ago when I was looking for my last laptop, the choice was fairly clear as to what was the best options.  Basically for the price, I didn’t think there was anything worthy but an optioned up Dell Latitude.  Dell is still (of course) by far the best bang for the buck, nothing comes close price/specs wise but I’ve looked at:

• Dell Latitude again (over priced business use)
• Dell Vostro (Cheap completely customisable Business series)
• Dell Inspiron (Consumer, very little difference to the Vostro’s)
• Dell XPS (Dell’s Cream of the crop, great mix of everything)
• Dell Precision (Over priced, performance Business Model)
• Alienware (True performance, but I thought with ageing hardware & very expensive)
• Apple Macbook Pro (I’d love one of these, not worth twice the price of the equivalent Dell machine though); and
• a range of Gaming Acer, Asus, HP/Compaq, Lenovo and Sony models which were either under performers or largely over priced

Once again, the Dell range offer the best money to nuts ratio, and quite often offer the newest (and thus best) hardware out of all the major players, so Macbook boasting aside, Dell gets my vote.

On second look, the Vostro looks like the best option, it can be optioned up to the max, and comes with a lot of extras that would otherwise cost money on the Inspiron range, so the clear winner for the time being is the Dell Vostro 1700.

Now why didn’t I pay the extra $100AUD for 3 years international warranty, when I last had the chance?

I’d originally started writing this post at Green Park station last night (Thursday 3rd April), but the rest was written today

It’s 9:15pm and I’m currently standing at the entrance to Green Park Station, which as I stand is about a 100m walk from the front door of my office.  Tonight, like any normal night, I left at 6:00pm, as such I’m no closer to home than I was the better part of four hours ago.  But there’s no usual story of drunken antics or other similar fun, I’ve been stuck on a packed Jubilee Line Tube train with no air, fans and only emergency lighting the whole time.

I have to say, a fully clothed Roman Bath packed with pissy London commuters is not my idea of a fun way to spend a few hours, but there wasn’t much I could do but laugh.  And like human evolution, accelerated at a thousand times the normal speed my nose has evolved in the way I can now say, without doubt, that I can identify the sweaty smell of almost any human being, young or old, male or female, white collar or blue collar, black or white and of course the most pungent of aroma…. me.

People got really funny, really quickly in that situation and started to panic, like repeatedly pulling the Emergency alarm was going to do anyone any good, as the driver had to explain several times:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I realise everyone is upset, and quite frankly I am too, but there’s not a lot of things I can do at present so I’ll just ask you to stay calm.  Please note, pulling the emergency handle on the train repeatedly will not help the situation, and no, there are no toilets on this train, and no, I’m not allowed to let you off the train to walk down the tracks”.

I think the worst thing was, because of the power cut, the driver couldn’t communicate with anyone at the stations or other tube staff.  It wasn’t all bad though, finally, just before 9:00pm the London Underground cavalry and Police arrived and we walked off back down the tunnel to Green park.  That was the coolest part about it all.

The best photo I could get of the tunnel, wish I’d got more

Things I learnt:

• It’s never not an option to go to the toilet before leaving the office
• If the power goes out completely, there is no communication at all with the upper world (apparently due to using an inferior/cheap communication system)
• Old style wireless/CB (I’m assuming) still works with other drivers along the tunnel
• London tube tunnels are nothing like the New York tunnels you see in Law and Order or dodgy 80’s cop movies.  At least on the Jubillee line, noone could live down there, and so my thoughts of a subterranean London civilisation have been all but dashed.
• Once again, its never not an option to go to the toilet before leaving the office

Update: BBC News Article - Hundreds trapped on Underground

I’m afraid, I think I’ve been duped by April Fool’s Day again, and its not the first time.

One of my favourite sites back home is Whirlpool, for well over a decade now it’s provided a relatively unbiased view of the broadband situation in Australian, form the humble and mediocre beginnings of one way satellite, ISDN and others as a form of broadband medium right through to current technologies such as ADSL2+, WiMAX and Fibre technologies.  It’s owner, Simon Wright, has always stood heavily on neutral ground, and has a strong policy against defamation and vendor verdicts, despite the fact I’m sure there could be a lot of money in subtley pointing what is now “8.6 million people visit ninemsn each month, representing 73 per cent of active Australian Internet users” toward one of Australia’s bigger telco’s.

So when I logged on half an hour ago and read the front page, entitled “ninemsn acquires leading online discussion site” , I was appalled at the thought that Simon may have finally sold out.  So appalled that I wrote a reply to the discussion on the topic believing while I was writing it I was the first to reply as the the reply counter had been artificially set to 0.  That is, of course until I pressed post, and I’d realised I’d joined the masses, one of several hundred who’d logged on almost simulataneously to express their deep regret over this sad occasion.

The Dead Giveaway

Who’s the patsy now though?  I am…… again.

I can remember being fooled by April Fools Jokes on Websites on at least five occasions now, two of which I knew clearly it was April Fools Day and I was still so convinced by the writeup I’d instantly believed it.  One year comes to mind when the writer of a similarly sized Australian forum informed everyone that as of the start of May, all forum subscriptions would attract a monthly fee and a fee per message sent.  As you can imagine (like a cell full of stupids) this provoked uproar, aggression and upset an awful lot of people, especially once they’d realised they’d fallen one of the most obvious tricks.  Many were shamed due to their responses.

April Fools Day does seem to be a big event on the net though, with sites from all over the globe, large and small, making obsurd claims that people fall for year after year.  Some notable examples are:

• The Google Search Tool that can see into the future
• Googles TISP, providing mega broadband to the masses, via peoples Toilet and plumbing
• Google’s Paper - providing a free priting service to print all your incoming email onto hardcopy paper.. cheap.
• (see a trend happening here)?