Jason Oakley : The life of an Aussie geek!

I heard some great news on the TV1 channel during advertising for upcoming shows in December.

HOUSE is coming to TV1!!! YAY! This means I can tape every episode and make sure I see them all, plus watch some for a second (third?) time   If you’ve read my page about stuff I like you will see House on the list

Also, I’ve just found this on Wikipedia while researching actors (well. . ok the German blonde) in National Treasure: “Although the audio commentary says that there were no plans for a sequel, the popularity of the first film warranted a sequel, which was given a go-ahead in 2005. National Treasure 2 is expected to coming to theaters December 21, 2007″.  Kewl! I like this movie.  I’m always interested in Knights Templar, Freemasons and Rosecrucian stuff (for some reason.. don’t ask. I also like Egyptian and Chinese stuff — like Fung Shui and Chinese Medicines).

I just watched a really cool episode of Mythbusters where they try to prove or disprove cat burglars from Hollywood movies .. breaking into businesses by climbing up air vents, tricking alarm systems, etc.  Really fun!

Today I went to buy a coffee in the afternoon, but the coffee shop was closed so instead I went to JB HiFi and bought “Serenity” and “Mr & Mrs Smith” on DVD.  $13 and $16, respectively.  Very nice.

I’ve been trying to ascertain whether Windows Live Mail Desktop supports contacts and calendar and notes synchronization with mobile phones and other mobile devices.  I haven’t come to any conclusion as yet.  Let me know if you do.

It’d save me shelling out AUD$690 for Office Standard 2007 just to have Word and Outlook, the latter only to synchronise contacts, calendar info and notes.

I started downloading the latest beta of Windows Live Mail Desktop, but it was going to take one hour via dialup and a new Freeroll Texas Hold’em Poker tournament is starting in 5 minutes

There are just too many applications I want to use which only have a Windows executable.

Eg: Dialup modem driver (Conexant), all the online poker clients I have.  There’s no comparable mail checker like Mailwasher for Linux.  VNC is so simple and easy.  iTunes is too good to give up.. it’s my main media player now.  Funky functions of MSN Messenger.  Last.FM rocks.   Can’t easily synchronise my Sony Ericsson mobile phone, nor explore it easily from Linux.

It makes me wonder at news articles with headlines like this: Linux desktop domination “just a matter of time”.  I don’t think so.  I also don’t think so in my lifetime.  Prove me wrong, if you can. I just don’t see it ever happening.  There’s some people who get benefit from using only Linux but for the majority it’s going to be either Windows XP or Windows Vista.  No contest.

I’m even willing to start saving money now so I’ll have enough to buy a copy of Vista the day it hits the shelves.  I’m actually looking forward to it now.  I cleared all the data off the 200Gb hard drive in my Linux server and when I buy Vista I’ll install that into my PC and partition it to be my main hard drive.  I suppose I could use the 80Gb drive in there now for Windows Vista and the 200Gb for everything else.  I dunno.  We’ll see.  I shall have to compare access times, etc for it.  I want a nice fast machine.

I wish Microsoft would have a ’save to flash memory’ feature people have been speculating about coming in Macintosh OSX one day in the future.  It’d be nice.  Then, when you shut down Windows could save the current state of Windows to flash memory.  When you boot up next, you turn the PC on and Windows is running instantly.  Although, with Windows needing reboots all the time, perhaps it’s not that good an idea after all hehe.

I really would have liked to see Linux do better and get to use it instead of Windows, but the convenience of Windows wins hands-down.  Don’t get me wrong.  Linux has come a very long way since I first confused myself trying to install Slackware from source and find all those dependencies.  Now, you don’t have to do that so it’s getting easier to install software, like Windows is, but it’ll never get to be as easy.

I might even invest in Office 2003.  I don’t need a full version though.  I just need Word for file editing (mainly documents, resumes etc) and Outlook for synchronising contacts, etc from my phone.  There isn’t any freeware (or commercial software that I’ve found) which does it as well.  I even downloaded the Thunderbird ‘Lightning’ extension but it doesn’t synchronise with anything at all.  It just imports Outlook data.  Perhaps once it hits version 1.0 it might?  I don’t know.  I didn’t read the roadmap, but there’s nothing in there now and I need backups now.

So, at the over-expensive cost of Windows Vista, I’ll start saving and buy the darn thing.  It’s annoying, though.  I bet you could buy a brand new PC for $300 if Windows wasn’t pre-installed on it.  No matter how much we complain, that’s how it’s run so we just have to put up with it.

I actually picked up Sienna Thursday night for a change, since I was off work all week sick.

Yesterday afternoon we jumped on my pushbike and rode to the nearest park and had some fun on the swings and slide.  In the morning I had to go to the doctor’s again and have a checkup.  It seems the new medicine is working but my throat has been sore as.. so he prescribed some Difflam to numb my throat a bit.  It seems to work.

This morning we went to swimming lessons.  Sienna had a ball as usual and I wasn’t late, for once.  After that I picked up the Difflam and some tissues and we came back home.  Today we’ve weeded the garden, washed clothes and had a nap for a couple of hours.  Swimming lessons at 8:15am was definitely a bad idea, but it gets me motivated when I normally wouldn’t be.  An afternoon nap is always a good thing.  I’ve seen studies saying everyone should have a nap for 30-60 minutes every afternoon, including work days as it makes you more alert.

I’ve been playing some Texas Hold’em Poker online the last couple of days just to check it out.  I haven’t really played much online lately as it didn’t interest me, but I got into a Tournament and that was quite good fun.  Click on the “Texas Hold’em Poker blogs” link to the left there to read more.  If you only see one post click on the link at the top of that blog post called “Pirhana Jay’s Poker blog” (yea that’s my Poker handle ).

Yesterday afternoon I wanted to connect to my Linux box via the Wireless WiFi network.

I enabled it but could not see the Linux box (for some reason it no longer auto starts after the 8 seconds countdown and I have to hit ENTER.. also after about an hour or so it just locks up and I have to reboot).  Since I couldn’t see it, I hit DISABLE and my Windows XP machine rebooted.

About 5 boots would not get past the BIOS screen. After that Grub (my boot manager from when I had Linux installed) locked up for about 15 reboots.  Next, I got to the Windows start menu saying Windows had not started properly and asking if I wanted to go into Safe Mode or boot Normally.  None of the options worked (including Last Known Good) so after a while I rang Tomcat and talked to him.  He suggested putting the XP CD back in and trying the Repair Windows option.  Well, this didn’t work properly either as it kept telling me it could not copy files from the CD even though I could from a DOS Box and even use EXPAND.EXE to extract the file.  I kept skipping files by hitting ESC and Y (yes I’m sure I want to) until the installer had completed.  Now I could boot into Windows XP but could not create a DialUp network.  The modem was in the Hardware list and the driver was fine, but New Network Connection had greyed out DialUp networking via Modem. Argh! I took Tomcat’s advice and backed everything up to another partition and then Formatted C: drive and reinstalled Windows.  I also finally deleted the Linux partition and set up NTFS on it.  I just have music and stuff on there now, so it’s handy.

I also found out (after seeing the doctor) that the eye drops I had were not working, so he prescribed me some stronger antibiotics and gave me the rest of the week off.  Wish me luck with these drops.  Conjunctivitis really sucks the big one.  The main downside to being sick is I can’t play Poker in person as Conjunctivitis is highly contagious. Damn Damn Damn Damn!
So, now my PC is working again on the internet and I’ve got things going a lot more smoother than they were.  So, I’m happy.

You know.. I never really got that quote before. I didn’t realise that Americans call Conjunctivitis “Pink Eye”.

So I’ve had the last couple of days off work due to having the above condition. The doctor said adults don’t usually get it from kids (Sienna had it first), but I said I’ve not had it before so he said I’ve not got any immunity against it.  The doctor said I need a few days off work cos it’s highly contagious.  I have an appointment tomorrow morning to get checked up to make sure it’s gone before I head back to the office.

The downside is I can’t play Poker for a few days either. Gah! Oh well. That’s just at venues. I can play Online in the meantime. If you want to keep up with what I’m doing at Poker I won’t be posting about it here any more. I have a new Poker site (in case you didn’t notice the new link on the left there) and have a blog on it as well as other News and information about Texas Hold’em Poker.  I found out after looking around a lot that if you click on the Poker blogs link you will see only my last post. You have to click on the link at the top of that blog post called “WauloKs Poker blog” to see the rest of my blog posts.  I will be posting information there for people new to playing Poker like what happens when you go to a venue, winning hands, FAQs and other info. It might help out some people who have never played before.

I’ve had Foxtel Platinum package for months and only realised the other day that I get two free Box Office movies per month with that package. I’ve been missing out on movies I’d like to see because I didn’t want to pay an extra $6 each. Argh! So last night I watched Date Movie. I don’t usually watch those crap shows but hey.. it had Alyson Hannigan and Sophie Monk in it. How could I *not* watch it? I later saw an advertisement for Ultraviolet which looks like a very interesting movie starring Milla Jovovich (drool!). It seems to have only received 3/10 on IMDB but the stunts look way cool and it has Milla in it (did I mention that yet? ). Tell me if you have seen it and what you thought of it. Since I’ve cut down my Foxtel package, next month I will have to pay for these so I want to watch one more Box Office movie before Dec 10th when the next billing cycle starts.

Yesterday morning we got the washing done.. clothes and dishes and caught a train into the city for something different for Sienna.

First thing yesterday morning we went to swimming lessons. We got there a bit late again. I was sure 15 minutes would be way long enough so next week I’ll leave a lot earlier.  We were only 10 mins late so she got to meet her actual teacher this time and had fun swimming with the kids. She really enjoys it there. On the way out, they had a sausage sizzle so I got Sienna a sausage since she wasn’t that interested in much breakfast.  I bought her usual tinned pasta but they only had two tins left since they were on special so I got another brand and she ate it up and loved it. I might get some more next time.
We went to Milton to drop off the shoebox full of goodies to go to Operation Christmas Child. Sienna wanted to hand the box over to the lady herself. Every station we stopped at she wanted to know if we were in Africa to see the girl who the box was going to. She wanted to play with the little girl. I had a hard time telling her that we weren’t going to Africa and she wouldn’t see the little girl to play with. She had asked a week ago where the box was going to so I said “To a girl, maybe in Africa or something”. It turns out the box is going to Vietnam anyway.  We walked from the train station to the 96.5FM radio station and dropped off the box. Sienna handed it to the lady herself and was very happy to do so, if not a bit shy.  They had a sausage sizzle there as well so I asked if she wanted another sausage with sauce. She did, so I got one for her and one for myself. Then, she didn’t want hers after all so I had two. That was my lunch. They had orange cordial as well so we had a cup of that each. I handed over some money for the sausages but they said it was for free so… Bargain!  We headed back to the station but the next train wasn’t for 21 minutes so we walked to a nearby store and got a chocolate milk each.

We spent the afternoon blowing bubbles and finishing the watching as well as looking at a couple of TV shows after having a sleep. We went to bed at about 12:30pm and woke at 3:30pm when the phone rang and my uncle was there for a chat. He has been trying to ring me for a few weeks, but I’ve been busy with Poker and bowling, etc. He even tried on a Sunday but that was when we were Christmas shopping. I will have to give him my mobile number next time.  I must remember to send them all Christmas cards. I sent off 20 cards already over the last week.

Today has been very hot. They tell us this week it will get to 33 degrees Celcius during the week. I can believe it. I’m gonna have the air conditioner on a lot by the looks of things. I really hope it’s going to rain more as well. We sure do need it. The storms we had last week did SFA for the dams. I drove to poker through a big storm the other night.

Sienna is currently napping in the bedroom… on the floor. She pretended she couldn’t climb onto the bed so I said “Oh well. I guess you will have to sleep on the floor then” and put my hand out to help her onto the bed. She decided it was going to be fun to sleep on the floor .. so she did. heh.

This morning I phoned Foxtel to cut down the number of channels I get. I don’t have so much time to watch it now, so I got the Basic package plus the kids channels. It’s going to save me about $30 per month.  Cheerin’!

Back off to Poker at my old haunt again. Let’s hope I haven’t dropped TOO far down the ranks after playing badly last Sunday night.