Older blog entries for mibus (starting at number 210)

Robert Mibus: Three months and eight megabits

Well, it's been three months at Internode - a bit over, actually.

And... it's cool here. I really like that I can focus on just sysadmin work, instead of trying to divide my attention sixty ways. (That's Anton's job now :-).

And I still get to spend time on forums (think Whirlpool), though it's not quite as easy to justify! I also have had quite a few freebies already (coffee mugs, shirts, hats, etc - from node itself and vendors).

The SAN failure was... interesting. Everyone was pretty calm, despite the calamity, and everything got done and done well. Despite the email issue continuing through the weekend, almost everything was up and running pretty quickly after the failure.

Other cool things include the company-supplied MBP. I always had a real soft spot for OSX, and now it's my primary OS. I bought myself a Dell Mini 9 for the bus trip, and installed Ubuntu. Totally awesome, ranks amongst the best $600 I ever spent!

Oh, and I'm on a RIM where I'm living - but at least this time, (a) it's DSL-capable, (b) I'm really close, and (c) Internode pays - so I get ~7.5Mbit. I also now have a Nodephone2 account; cheap calls (from Aldinga, the number of STD calls we make suck). More importantly, the number starts with 08-75 instead of the 08-85 normal for the area - the puzzled look on people's faces is worth it!

I do miss my friends though. Hopefully we'll be able to catch up in the near future ;-)

Syndicated 2008-11-20 16:09:00 from mibus and co's blogs

Robert Mibus: End of an Era

Well, it's done. Over. My last day at Ballistic Media (CGSociety) is now finished.

To my friends - for five years, my family - good bye. Keep in touch!

Syndicated 2008-07-25 08:00:00 from mibus and co's blogs

Robert Mibus: Changing Jobs!

Wow.

It wasn't that long ago that I never thought I'd do this.

On the 25th of July, 2008, my time at Ballistic Media will come to an end. On the 28th of July, I will begin working for Internode as a Systems Administrator.

Wow.

So many reasons - mostly that I need to explore new things, and try new stuff out. It's been one of the hardest decisions I've ever made: giving up the family and security that I've had here at Ballistic, for the dream of something new and different.

Here's to change.

Syndicated 2008-07-01 00:24:00 from mibus and co's blogs

Robert Mibus: "Foundation", questions...

A beautiful quote from Asimov's "Prelude to Foundation"

Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions - not even thinking of questions, to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

-- Hari Seldon, subchapter 54.

Syndicated 2008-05-27 23:40:00 from mibus and co's blogs

Robert Mibus: Tuesday

Last day today...

Breakfast was uneventful. Missy headed out fairly soon to run some errands in the city, I looked after Rachael and Claire and one of their (cheeky :) cousins.

Most of my day was spent with the kids, mucking around (and, let's face it, cleaning up :).

Some of Claire's presents involved a train set... so we got to have a lot of fun playing with that!

Missy ran off to Jo's for some girlie-time, and she took the younger two kids - so Rachael and I watched Star Trek and Zoom before bed-time. It was hilarious when I mentioned to Rachael that we might watch Star Trek - Claire hadn't yet left, and yelled "STAARR TREEEEEEKKKKKKKK" as loud as I'm sure she could, before running full-speed across both lounge-rooms.

Overall, it's been a kinda weird experience having so much time off without a specific event or cause. I was hoping for more time to do geeky stuff, but that didn't pan out. I did get a good chunk of QL watched, at least. I hope to watch another ep or two tonight still - we'll see :).

I also found what looks to be a fast PSP-capable H.264 encoder, avidemux. Can do faster than real-time, even on my laptop. I'm not sure the quality is as good as my custom-hacked ffmpeg solution, but it actually works on the laptop, which is a plus. Lots of checkboxes to play with, too.

Back to work tomorrow... I'm scared about how my inbox will look :)

Syndicated 2008-03-11 10:27:00 from mibus and co's blogs

Robert Mibus: Monday - Claire's Birthday!!

Today was little Claire's birthday. My baby has just turned TWO! I have some photos on the camera, will have to post them later (it's nearly 1AM, and I need sleep!).

Missy and the girls cooked pancakes for breakfast - mmm! Claire poured an insane amount of maple syrup onto her pancakes while nobody was watching...

Morning tea was at Mum's; got to see the grand-folk also. Good visit, for sure. Lunch was back here for hot chips with Ben and Helen and the other set of munchkins.

A late afternoon tea with Missy's mum and grandma, followed by dinner at Cathy's (sorely lacking Matt, but I'll tease him about that later ;). I disappeared after dinner to match up against Matt's brothers on WiiSport - I sucked, unsurprisingly.

The girls were so tired they went to sleep easily - for once! Another movie with Missy, who then couldn't sleep and we watch some SGA. (Best episode of the season, IMO - but then I always did love McKay :).

Had to do some fiddling online before bed, thought I'd keep up the blog and make some quick notes before finally retiring. Tomorrow is my last day... I'm on kid-duty tomorrow, while Missy and Helen take care of some stuff in town.

Happy Second Birthday, my sweet angel Claire.

Syndicated 2008-03-10 14:11:00 from mibus and co's blogs

Robert Mibus: Sunday

Another pretty good day, albeit with some runarounds.

Toast for breakfast, we're running really low on cheese though. Public holiday tomorrow, and more importantly, Claire's birthday!!

We went to an open inspection this morning... not a bad house for the price, but it's more than we can really afford, even if we under-bid. I really doubt they would even accept a bid that we could afford. After lunching with Ben and Helen, we took care of something else... hint for now - fill a lot with 8 bits (unsigned) and you're still a few short.

Ali came over to give Claire her birthday present, more Thomas stuff - I'm so jealous! ;-)

Missy and I watched National Treasure - a great movie. Yet to watch #2, should be fun though I hope.

More Quantum Leaping tonight... last night's was much more in-line with what I want out of my QL! I saw some brief bits of ST:Enterprise tonight, was amusing watching Scott Bakula as the captain, I kept feeling like he was just pretending (more than normal actors ;).

I've also realised a few important things - the n810 should be about the size of my GPS unit, which is definately pocketable. My laptop's issue with not displaying the correct battery usage (and not correctly auto-suspending on low battery) is a symptom of the fact that it's not updating the internal battery information unless an external event triggers it. ie., if I plug and unplug the AC adapter, then the battery info updates.

Syndicated 2008-03-09 11:42:00 from mibus and co's blogs

Robert Mibus: Saturday

Another excellent day!

Ben came over with his kids, and we watched the combined six-kid circus while our respective wives strutted their stuff at the gym. Later, Ben and I took our two eldest children each to the pool. (Yes, I went to the pool again! :).

After thrashing around for the better part of an hour, we went home to hot chips for lunch. General chit-chat was followed by Ben and I escaping the rabble for a quiet drink and some browsing at JB's at the local mall.

I'm happy to say that my "requirements" for my next laptop should be easily met far cheaper than I'd anticipated. (I want at least a Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, Bluetooth, webcam). Alas, nobody has any n800s or n810s yet. I really just want to know if they're actually pocketable!? It looks like it is... just... Anyway, I'm planning on buying one for my birthday (early, if I can manage it ;).

Missy made us all some Chinese for dinner, yum! More chatting, then it was time to say goodnight to Ben, Helen, and all of the kids. Ours got tucked away, and were so worn out they nodded off pretty quick.

Missy recently went to bed, we got some great chatting time in-between.

I'm about to watch more Quantum Leap, but here's a quick recap of 5x01... I didn't like it. New music, ugh. Preferred the S3/S4 title sequences. The whole multi-leap thing was almost pointless, and the mixing of mesons etc. stuff annoyed me endlessly. It was needlessly different from a regular QL episode, and I can't say I liked it. It also dragged on longer than it needed to (it was a double-length ep).

Anyway, time to watch another ep or two before I fall asleep!! :)

Syndicated 2008-03-08 11:24:00 from mibus and co's blogs

Hols

Well, it's been a while since I blogged cos I've been SO BUSY!

Anyway, tomorrow I'm taking a day off work. Monday is a public holiday, and Tuesday I'm also having off. That makes a five day weekend. I've also just finished season four of Quantum Leap today - only one season left! It's amazing seeing all these now-stars, young! For example, Terry Farrell was in the season finale.

I moved to Virgin Wireless Broadband late last year, since I can't get DSL here. (RIM! And a very old one, at that). I was initially in love with the service ($60, no line rental costs, free local and national calls, 4GB quota). Speed is OK (I frequently get 70-80kbps on downloads). Latency is a bitch (~5x to the office, compared to the DSL2+ connection I often use).

However, lately I've been getting really frustrated. Really frustrated. Random drop-outs and glitches have been getting more common. There was a two-hour one on Monday when I was trying to work from home (I gave up after one hour). Just now, we had two separate minute-long outages while Missy was trying to do an online tute / live-chat.

Anyway, off to do some stuff. Night!

Syndicated 2008-03-06 10:30:00 from Robert Mibus's blog

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