Pentankh Eternal’s Blog

All I can say is Trejkaz was right

I got home and when I drove up the driveway there he was sitting at the back door meowing like "Where the hell have you been? I’ve been waiting for you to get home so I can get inside and have something to eat. I’m starving and tired and want to come inside." heh

I was lucky enough to be working down on the coast today so as soon as I knocked off at 5pm I drove home fast and got out the lawn mower. The lawn was up over my knees in height so it really really needed mowing. Unfortunately, it has been raining so much that I couldn’t mow and when I could, I was working up in Brisbane so didn’t get home until about 6:30pm. Once it hits 7pm it’s dark here.

The lawn is a bit shabby looking but at least the grass is short now and I won’t have to search for Sienna when she goes into the back yard to play this weekend

I decided to have another look at electronics. I’ve been interested in electronics on and off for about 20 years but haven’t really made much. My cousin years ago had tried to put together a Dick Smith Electronics Funway project to make a doorbell but never got it to work. He gave it to me and I fixed it and mum and dad have used it for years at their home.

I have spent the last few lunches at work trying to find books or magazines on electronics and they no longer exist:

Electronics Australia and EA Today are no longer being published. SILICON CHIP is now the only electronics magazine published in Australia. It is available each month from your newsagent or directly mailed from the publisher by subscription.

I can’t even find Silicon Chip anywhere. I might have to subscribe. One newsagent said they can’t get the magazines any more. They can only stock what the publishers send them and they are sending less and less technologly magazines, including computer and console magazines. Apparently they just don’t sell very well.

I even went to a big Dymocks book store and they don’t have any books there. I went into a technical subjects bookstore and they have computer books of all different kinds, but again no electronics. Looks like you can’t get them for love nor money.. I know.. I asked if I could get it for love but the newsagent gave me a strange look and hid behind the counter Maybe I should have promised to be gentle…

If anyone in the Brisbane area knows where to find such books and magazines please let me know! In the meantime I’m going to look it all up on teh intarweb. I found a site with lots of tutorials. Post any you know in the Comments section below.

The last couple of days I’ve had a sore ear. In fact it’s been sore for a while and I was hoping the antibiotics I got for my flu would have helped but today it’s as sore as hell.

I’ve taken some Panadeine but might have to head to the doctor’s again this afternoon after work.  I had thought it may be the silicone ear plugs I’ve been using. I had really sore ears a long while ago and the doctor then told me it was sensitive ears not coping with the plugs. I guess it still could be that so I slept last night without any ear plugs. Didn’t seem to help but then it could be this will take time to fix.

While shopping last weekend I saw we have Cheerios in the breakfast cereals section. I thought I’d take a look since I’ve heard about them on American TV shows (eg. Family Guy). I compared the calories, etc with Just Right and it looks like Cheerios are less calories so decided to give it a go. They taste quite good.. a bit like Nutri Grain (only much less sugar no doubt ). Sienna loves Cheerios too.

From SMH:

EDS jobs go as Optus switches
OPTUS has cut its outsourcing arrangement with EDS, which ditched contract staff working on the account last week. The move comes as the telco prepares a new billing and customer care platform.

The US services giant last week laid off 16 contract workers it had working full time on the Optus account.

A number of full-time EDS staff are believed to have been let go as well.

The cuts were the first of several that would result in a 35 per cent trim of EDS staff on the Optus account, sources said.

The staff are believed to have been developing billing capabilities for the Optus third-generation network, which offers a wide range of data and video applications.

EDS is contracted to run GSMIS, Optus’s ageing mobile billing system.

However, the telco is planning to move its mobile customers to Arbor, its revamped fixed-line billing system.

The technology services arm of SingTel, Optus’s parent company, has been running Arbor since taking charge of the Optus data centres from Hewlett-Packard last year.

"It was a finite piece of work," Optus spokeswoman Luisa Ford said yesterday.

"We have a good working relationship with EDS, and have no immediate plans to disengage their services."

EDS spokeswoman Julie Hines said: "We provide IT services to Optus for the support and management of parts of its billing systems.

"It includes systems integration activities such as project and program management services, business analysis, and testing. We have 100-plus people engaged to deliver these services. This number fluctuates as we continually align our resources to suit business needs.

"In providing services to Optus, we review the need for contractors regularly.

"For this reason, the number of contractors varies on an ongoing basis - upwards and downwards."

The news casts more uncertainty over EDS’s Australian operations.

The group is believed to have lost a $250 million a year deal to manage and operate Telstra data centres to IBM.

EDS is in talks with the Commonwealth Bank over the future of a 10-year relationship.

In the past year, EDS’s local staff numbers have shrunk from 6309 to 6175, Ms Hines said.

The Optus mobile billing system, GSMIS, is something of a dinosaur.

It was developed for the now-defunct analogue AMPS network operated by Telstra.

Last year Optus made a major upgrade to its fixed-line billing platform, Arbor, which is provided by Comverse.

The company plans to move its mobile billing to the new software as part of a $500 million billing and customer overhaul.

Well, it looks like Symbian has gone off on a tour of Australia or something. I guess life stuck inside the house by yourself is too boring.

I’ve had him locked in the house daily as I read in the paper that the council gets aggro if your cat gets off your property. He always met me at the door when I got home, whether he was in the house all day or if he was outside. I didn’t let him outside but all I can guess is he may have snuck out when I put the garbage out yesterday morning. I walked around the house calling him and looked in every room and cupboard in the house.

That’s the last of them. Now everyone has left and it’s just me. A pity. I just bought a big bag of kitty litter and some new tins of catfood. I actually bought some more expensive catfood for a treat, but looks like he might not get to try it out. Hope you found somewhere better to live, Symbian.

I’ve finally updated the News on AusPUG.org so it selects the news from a news forum, thus integrating the front page news with the ability to leave comments from users logged in accounts. It certainly looks a lot nicer in design and function

I’m glad I’ve moved all my sites over to Jumba now. I don’t have to worry about paying my account to my webhost in US Dollars and having it converted to AUD along with any conversion fees. My last Bank charged me to do the conversion. I don’t know if my new one does, but I don’t have to worry about it anyway It was such a good deal I paid for 12 months and got 2 months free. Suweet!

I had a fun weekend with Sienna last weekend. On Saturday we went to a kids indoor playground. She ran around for nearly two hours with the kids and even rode on a merry go round. We had lunch there as well. Once she became tired she came to me and asked to go home in the car. She fell asleep in the car on the way home and slept for a couple of hours. On Sunday we went to the shopping centre again for something to do and had lunch there then rode on the centre train and played at Intencity. She loves it there. We played lots of skeeball and a game of basketball then traded in the tickets on a bubble maker ’swiss army knife’ and some chocolate.

The Weather report for this weekend is wild thunderstorms for most of the weekend. Looks like Sienna and I will be stuck indoors. We’ll no doubt find some fun games to play in the house and watch some TV. If it’s not TOO storm we may even head back to that playground.