Older blog entries for pjf (starting at number 253)

Tragedy
My mother was a regular reader of this journal. Not very long after each post she'd usually contact me with advice, questions, or to tell me that I've made errors. In many cases these 'errors' were just industry puns.

Unfortunately, my mother won't be calling me about this entry.

Yesterday, Frances Fenwick, my beloved mother, unexpectedly passed away.

Mom was going to pick us up for tea. We were to go to her house and help set up a new scanner, something she was looking forward to immensely. However, she never arrived, and never returned our calls.

We're not quite sure what happened, and mom is currently with the coroner. We think that it could have been asthma related, but it may have been a heart problem, or it could be something else entirely. At the moment we just don't know.

My father found mom on the kitchen floor when he returned from work Sunday afternoon. He attempted CPR, but by the time mom was found, it was too late.

My mother was in poor health for some years, but that never prevented her from getting about and doing what she wanted. Although she was unwell, none of us expected anything like this to happen. It's been a shock to myself, my father, and our family and friends.

The main project that my mother was working on was the George Collingridge Society website. My mother was passionate and inspired by her research, and I believe that she would have liked us to view her pages, even though they were not yet complete.

My mother will be sorely missed, and fondly remembered.

It's 3am...
And I've learnt a new scenario to add to the diaster recovery plan. What if it rains? What if it rains a lot?

We just discovered that when we have huge amounts of rain, combined with big fat hailstones, that something goes wrong in the roof adjoining the office and water gets in. Quite a lot of water. This could just be because the top of the gutters is flush with the bottom of the roof, and so if they overflow, water can get into the roof cavity. This area happens to be about the only area that doesn't have any eaves, so rather than the water running away or down the exterior walls, it gets onto the ceiling -- which in this area is lower than the rest of the house as well.

Other possibilities include broken tiles, bad valleys, or the solar hot-water service somehow making it easier to flood.

In any case, at 1am we performed an emergency removal of all gear from the area, which was mainly used for storage. Some books got damp, some old ISA network cards were sodden, and a couple of pentium-90s that should have been tossed years ago were drenched. Otherwise, no significant damage that we're aware of.

However, water in the roof cavity had another danger. Electrical problems. Something, somewhere, tripped the safety switch (earth leakage detector), disabling all appliances.

Our server dutifully switched to UPS, and then ate the battery and died while we were trying to locate the fault. That's very bad -- it's supposed to prepare itself for an emergency shutdown, and proceed with it if power is not restored in a timely fashion, or if the battery goes low.

We discovered that isolating the front-half of the property allowed us to restore power to the office. We also discovered that a light fitting in the watery area was shorting, producing a distinctive smell of ozone and a very disturbing noise.

Cut the lights at the circuit-breaker, tested the light to see if it was hot (temperature or current), tested a few times in different places (using the back of one's hand), and proceeded to remove the light. We're going to wait until everything dries out before we try to turn it back on.

Powered back on our server, it grumbled but started. One of the drives complained hugely during RAID re-sync. I dropped a job into RT that it should be removed from the array and the fresh reserve drive (already sitting in the machine) added in.

Sure enough, 70% into the reconstruction, the flakey drive reported a bad sector and was dropped from the array. I checked our backups were good, and initiated reconstruction with the fresh drive installed for this purpose.

Throughout this, there was much cursing of IDE drive manufacturers who produce such poor quality drives. It's a real shame when a '3 year warranty' means it can be almost guaranteed I'll be returning the drive to them after 18 months.

I really should be moving to SCSI. Sure, they're much more expensive, but the reliability is worth it. I've got much better things to do with my time than monkey around with poor hardware.

Drive reconstruction ends in about an hour. Hopefully we won't see any more issues.

Garden Maintenance
Apparently one can be legally obliged to mow one's lawn. During/after the honeymoon and many days of spring rains and good weather, the grass in the front yard was starting to get a bit long. What was surprising was a notice served by the council that we were required to reduce its length for fire protection purposes, or face a fine and/or a jail sentance. Yikes!
The grass is now cut.

Hints for businesses
When responding to written correspondence from your clients, try not to refer to the training co-ordinator as 'the girl'. This is especially important when said training co-ordinator is the one ultimately responsible in determining whether or not your client decides to pay for your services for the remainder of the year, and hence has a direct impact upon your bottom line.

Weight
I lost about three kilos from the last time I checked. I'm not chubby, but I've found my belt tighter than I would have preferred sometimes, so losing weight is good. I put it down to stress more than good exercise habits.

Business
I haven't checked the books, but I suspect that we've invoiced more in the last five months than we did for the entire 2002-2003 financial year. Business is booming, although it means I have no time for the more plesant things such as recreational time.

Two out of three small business owners I've spoken to recently have found it difficult to find or keep good staff. I'm finding the same. The remaining one in three pays a highly-paid consultant to avoid their staffing difficulties.

Business has me travelling interstate regularly. Last week was Canberra, this week and the next is Sydney. Next year there's a trip to Brisbane, and that's one of the few business trips I'm actually looking forward to.

ToEE
The ToEE wiki has been improving significantly recently, primarily thanks to James, one of our players. New features include a public guestbook, indexed blogs, new character portraits, humour, and much much more.

If you're the sort of person who enjoys reading about someone else's role-playing game, then you might even consider visiting. The new chronological character diaries are well worth reading.

If you're interested instead in how Google can decide that all sorts of irrelevant cruft is considered to have a high page-rank because it's written in W3C compliant XHTML and is updated regularly, then our humour page has numerous and disturbing examples.

Humour
On the topic of humour, Jacinta suggested that this image may be a good addition to our office.

I would like to point out that consultants from Perl Training Australia do an excellent job of solving client problems, and the previous link should be considered for its humour value only, and should not be taken to relate in any way to our business activities or professional ethics.

We make our money because our clients seem to have an inexhaustible list of desires, and they need someone to manage their other consultants. ;)

Vegetable Thief
Caught the thief who's been stealing our vegetables, since she tried to come back and take our artichokes (which weren't even ready to pick yet), and our loquats (which needed another week of ripening).

We informed the thief in no uncertain terms that we were not impressed at her taking our produce without even the common courtesy of asking, and that no, we were not going to let take away what she had picked thus far.

I'm very annoyed, as we now have a number of fruit and vegetgables that really should have been left in for another week or two to fully mature.

Hopefully we can keep a vegetable garden that doesn't get plundered before the vegetables are mature from now on.

Health
Recovering from a mild bout of the common cold. Stuffy nose, but not much else. Real bummer getting it just before my big teaching run for the quarter, but I'm glad it's nothing more serious.

Speeding
We have a large number of speeding cars in the street outside our house. It's pegged as a 50km/hr zone, but plenty of people ignore that. The local area has a large hoon population, with souped-up cars, doughnuts, and drag-races a common site. While I chuckle at this most of the time, and admit that it's probably a symptom of deeper community issues, I have to admit that speeding cars isn't making the street a safer place to live.

A recent report in the local newspaper talks about how when the police do a blitz on traffic offenses, they end up booking an incredible number of drivers. At the moment they're particularly targetting the speeding problem. Now, this sounds like a great money-making enterprise for the police, except they're a community service and have other things to do than sit by the side of a road with a speed camera.

And so it dawned on me. The police should sub-contract. If I can easily spot a dozen cars going 20-30km/hr over the speed limit per day, then so can most people on the street. Arrange for a training and qualification program for civilians to operate speed-cameras, and arrange for them to get a decent slice of any fines issued from cars they've caught. Before you know it, you'll have a bunch of enterprising people doing their qualifications and operating speed-cameras from their front-yards. Speeding is going to become very expensive. Those streets which are considered particularly probelmatic will probably have citizens jostling for the right to operate a camera.

Of course, you'll probably see a higher incidence of road-rage as irate drivers take out their frustration on the newly empowered citizens. That's a bit of a bummer.

Returning Friends
David, who's gone and joined the army, will be visiting this weekend. I won't get to spend as much time with him as I'd like, since I'm leaving interstate on Sunday on a teaching assignment.

We've organised for the next ToEE game to run to co-incide with David's visit. Apparently joining the army and being posted interstate isn't an excuse to miss roleplaying sessions. ;)

Work
Stacks of invoices to print and send, although all the money will be passed onto the lovely people who have been minding the business while Jacinta and myself have been away.

Business turn-over is likely to increase strongly over the next year. We'll have plenty of staff (at last!) and hope to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible.

Accounts Receivable is currently huge, with about 12% of our net value being in A/R.

Honeymoon
Tuesday 21st October
Arrived in Airlie Beach. Checked into the YHA where we were staying. Dropped into the dive centre, picked up reading materials. It's hot up here.

Wednesday 22nd October
Day spent learning SCUBA skills. Lots of reading from books, watching videos, answering questions, and becoming familiar with equipment.

People with us on the course included two guys from Holland, one from the USA, and a girl from Korea. Small class.

Thursday 23rd October
More time spent answering questions, watching videos, and completing skills in the pool. Received a full 100% on the final exam.

Friday 24th October -- Sunday 26th October
On-board a boat, the Stella Maris. Due to northerly winds we didn't reach the outer reef, but rather headed up to Hook Island. Went diving in Blue Pearl, Osprey, and Mackeral bays. Visibility was generally poor (2-5 metres), but still very much enjoyed the experience.

Jacinta and I elected to undertake advanced training on the boat, including extra navigational, limited visibility, naturalist and deep diving.

The deep dive was quite an experience. We only reached 23 metres (we were aiming for 27), the current was extreme and visibility was only a couple of metres. Almost the entire dive was done holding onto a (moving) anchor chain. I ate through plenty of air and breathed off the instructor's secondary regulator at the safety stop to ensure that I'd surface with the required 50 bar remaining.

Monday 27th October
Back from the boat, and off to Daydream Island (previously known as South Mole Island). Daydream Island resort was not particularly enjoyable. Service was poor to atrocious, there was an incident where our in-room safe was unlocked and left open (with our valuables in it) while we were out, there was a rat in the buffet hall, and the buffet offering did not match what was advertised on the menu.

Add to this poor customer management skills, huge numbers of activities being cancelled due to northerly winds, and incredible prices for food and drink, and Daydream rapidly became the low-point of the whole honeymoon. We collected as much of a refund as we could and headed back to the mainland after a single night.

Once again, I find that resorts are rarely worth the high price tag that come with them. I consistantly find that backpacker and budget hotel accomodation provides a more favourable experience at a fraction of the price.

Tuesday 28th October
Played mini-golf in the morning. Cute. Also investigated options for more diving. Most things are off due to these northerly winds. Don't ever go to the whitsundays if there are northerly winds, the whole place just shuts down.

Back on the mainland for the afternoon, staying in a self-contained apartment back in Airlie Beach. Kitchen, bathroom, satellite TV, air-conditioning, it's great.

Wednesday 29th October
Stuck in Airlie Beach. The lagoon is good, but all other activities still down due to these northerlies. Spent time relaxing and not doing much of anything. Very very good.

Thursday 30th October
Northerly winds are swinging around, so it looks like we may get to do a few things before we leave. We're supposed to be headed to Mackay to see Gwen (my sister-in-law) on Friday. However Friday is also supposed to have decent weather. We negotiate with Gwen for her to come and see us instead, and for us to take a boat aptly named the Reef Jet to the outer reef for some diving. I purchase myself a mask and snorkle, so I don't end up with a sore-spot on my forehead whenever I dive.

Friday 31st October
Up bright and early for the trip to the outer reef. My goodness, the boat absolutely flies. It took the Stella Maris some 4-5 hours to reach Hook Island. Reef Jet does it in about an hour.

Got two dives in at Bait Reef. Excellent visibility, although Jacinta hurries about underwater rather than going at a nice relaxed pace. Had buoyancy problems during the safety stop on the first dive, although we made friends with a small fish that decided to become our companion for the last 8 minutes of our dive.

Buoyancy problems all fixed by the second dive, and we were lucky enough to spot a small shark snoozing on the bottom. Amazed at the number of parrot fish, and the rate at which they can consume coral.

Third dive was back at Hook Island due to weather conditions. Visibility was about 4 metres, but the dive was excellent. Jacinta agreed to move along at my (very slow) pace, so I got to spend more time looking around and less time ensuring my buddy hadn't dissapeared. Saw hundreds of clams, some with incredible colours.

A quick trip back to the mainland, and then we drove to Mackay.

Saturday 1st November
Spent the day chilling out with Gwen, but had to leave back to Melbourne in the afternoon. A long flight home, made longer due to daylight savings having come into effect while we were away.

Honeymoon
Back from Honeymoon. Had a fantastic time, lots of diving (11 dives in total), snorkling, swimming, lazing around on beaches, and all those other good honeymoon things. Reading material on flights was an excellent book discussing the Australian stock-market, and Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Haven't finished either, but Kiyosaki's book is far too light on information for my tastes. If I wanted storytelling, I'd be reading a novel.

Discovered that Ian and Lizy have been doing an excellent job of looking after the business while I was away.

When it's not quite so late at night I'll write a much longer log of my exciting travels.

Wedding
I'm getting married in about four and a half hours. Am I nervous? No. Almost everything is prepared, and those few things that may not be fully fleshed out are minor details that I'm sure we can easily accomodate.

We're certainly fortunate in the weather today. It's bright and sunny, although it may be a little warm in a big suit or fancy wedding dress.

I have a wonderful feeling of peace and relaxation. For once in a very long time, work pressures are not on my mind. There's very little that I personally have to do before the wedding, and so wedding pressures are also gone. I feel very free, and very happy, and very comfortable. The feeling is very much akin to what I felt back in my days at University, especially during the holiday periods. No pressing matters, and plenty of time to relax, to learn, to invent and create.

Of course, I don't really have plenty of time. In a few hours I'll be shaving, putting wax in my hair, donning a suit, and heading off to the church. In other ways, I do have plenty of time. The honeymoon is going to be a huge break, and I'm really looking forward to it.

This beautiful feeling of freedom certainly re-inforces my conviction to retire as soon as possible.

Retirement
Whenever I talk about retiring at 30, or even as late as 35, I find that I'm often met with feelings of disbelief, shock, sometimes almost outrage. The biggest question people ask me is "what will you do?" and "won't you get bored?". There seems to be a big mentality out there that work is life, and life without work is empty and vaccuous.

Ask yourself, has there ever been anything that you wished that you could do, but couldn't because you never had the time? Aren't there skills you'd like to practice, knowledge you'd wish to gain, deeds that you'd wish to carry out? Without the constraint of having to work, you're incredibly empowered. You have a real opportunity to do things that are important to you. You can make the world a better place.

I have an almost endless list of things that I would rather be doing than working. I've been blessed with incredible friends, but I never seem to have enough time to spend with them. I have a great many things I would love to learn, or to teach, or to create, but only time for a scant few of them. I'd love to learn more about this world that I live in, and how I can make it better, but time constraints make that too difficult to put into practice.

To be able to do what I feel important, rather than what pays the bills, is definitely a dream for me, and one of the biggest reasons I left regular employment three years ago.

When people look at my calendar, they claim that I'm mad to be so busy. To me it all makes perfect sense. Money is time, and most importantly, interest on money is also time. When a day's worth of work means that Jacinta and myself can live comfortably for a week, and two busy months allows us to live comfortably for an entire year, being so busy isn't mad at all.

I better get ready, I'll be married in four hours.

Wedding
Yup, it's tomorrow. We've done the rehersal. We've had a bit of dinner beforehand. Jacinta's gone off to her grandmother's place, where's she'll be dressing up and everything tomorrow before the big event.

I still have to write a speech, although I'm not too worried about that, being a regular public speaker has its advantages. There's a bunch of work things that I would have like to have done before the day, but they'll have to wait.

Right now, I'm kicking back, listening to some tunes, and just taking it easy. We've got house-sitters all organised, and all those wedding things, and most things in the business should run themselves.

Managed to drop my inbox down to less than 150 messages (down from 600).

Dive Medical
On our honeymoon we're planning on doings lost of diving. However, I used to be asthmatic. Uh-oh. Diving as an asthmatic in Australia is a no-no. The problem isn't that you may get asthma underwater and you can't use a bronchiodilator (eg, ventolin). The problem is that asthma means you lose lung capacity, which can mean trapped air. If you're underwater, and rise to the surface (or to less depth) that air will expand. If it expands too much, you can pop a lung.

Popping a lung isn't nice, but not the biggest thing to worry about. Air in the bloodstream after you've damaged your lung is a much bigger worry. It can give you an embolism, causing brain damage, permanent paralysis, or death. That's bad.

So, you can imagine that my doctor was cautious about even thinking about passing my medical after hearing that I used to have asthma. I got to visit a respiritory lab to be given bronchioconstrictants (lung-irritants) and my reaction measured.

The good news is, my reactions were considered to be well within the normal range, and as such I'm considered "fit to dive". I'm still going to be cautious, an ex-asthmatic is still more likely to have problems than a regular person. I suspect that if I do feel any tightness of chest underwater, I'll need to go against my regular instincts and ensure that I stay under until it passes.

Advice to business-owners
If you think that your tech-magician, who's getting married the next day, gives a toss that you've having problems with machines after you've completely disregarded his advice, then you're completely mistaken. He can deal with your problems any day. He's only going to get married once.

Goodwill is like a bank. You can deposit into it, and you can withdraw from it when things are tough. But if you try to withdraw from it when it's empty, it's going to end up costing you a lot.