Joel Michael

Well, at about the time I was moving, my previous ADSL provider Dart got bought by another company. Things rapidly went to hell in a handbasket for my account then.

I had a backup dialup account with my ADSL plan, and that worked fine. Of course, it was dialup, so I had to get back on broadband as quickly as possible. It took them a week or two to get my line provisioned, and I got the little green Sync light on my ADSL modem, so I figured that all was well and good. Disconnect the modem (which had been going non-stop for a couple of weeks), and connect with ADSL. Hm, strange, authentication failed. Make sure I haven't buggered up my username and password. Still auth failed. Turn up debugging, and found that their RADIUS server was complaining that I had too many sessions open. Hm, curious. Leave everything disconnected for an hour or two, and try again. Still failed, same reason. Call tech support, get disconnected because there's too many people trying to call them. Bugger that, go back on dialup.

Now, repeat the above for about a week.

Company gets sold, helpdesk services get transferred to the new owner. At least they answered their phones, but could not do any troubleshooting because they did not have access to any of the old company's systems yet. Was promised that a senior tech support person would look into the problem. Go back to dialup for another couple of days.

Sometime during this my ADSL loggs in, for about 10 minutes, then dies again.

Have not heard anything from tech support for a couple of days, so call again. More promises to look into it, I even gave them the PPP debug logs, and told them where they should be looking to make it easy for them.

About a week later, still not resolved, I call them and tell them that I am churning because they have taken two weeks to unsuccessfully rectify a probably simple RADIUS issue.

I'm now with Netspace, and have not had a problem since! (by the way, if you're considering joining them, please put me down as a referrer :-D)

Wow, I keep saying that I'll update more often, but I never do. Don't hold your breath. Maybe reverse psychology will work - I will not post more often!

Anyway, where were we? Ah, yes, buying a house.

Well, house has been bought, and we're all settled in. ADSL is connected (and there's a whole 'nother post coming about THAT!). We're still trying to get the previous owner to pay the $300 water bill that they owe, remind me to talk to the solicitor tomorrow about it.

Moving went well, I hired a bunch and roped in a couple of work-mates to do the deed. Total cost, about $200, including the truck hire (and the beer and pizza I would have bought if everybody didn't bugger off early!) Bugger paying someone else to do it, too damn expensive.

Work is going well - some of the stuff I've seen makes me want to get off the 'net permanently. Or, at least, never accept any kind of attachment in an email.

I'm getting into playing Warhammer 40,000, there's another post coming about that too.

Well, I think that's about it in a nutshell! More to come...

I've heard about it, but never experienced it until today.

Of course, I'm talking about the phenomenon called "blog spam". Of course, I've got my mail server locked down tighter than a duck's arsehole, but some piece of shit spammer decided to post a turd against one of my entries!

Spammers. First against the wall when the revolution comes, I'll make sure of it.

Well, so much for that last promise of updating more often.  I might do more updates now, but I'm not sure of what.

You may remember in the last exciting episode, that I applied for a job.  I actually got that job, and the work is very cool.  Unfortunately, I can't talk about the coolest stuff I do (well, I could, but I'd have to kill you, and I don't particularly want to do that).  Suffice to say, it's a very scary Internet out there...

I also got married - I probably should have put in a few blog entries about it, but I didn't.  Oh well...

We are also just about to buy a house!  Unfortunately, the vendor is really dragging the chain on things, but we are going to move in on the 30th of October.  I still have to chat with our solicitor about a few final details, then I have to organise home & contents insurance, and get everything disconnected and reconnected.  I'm REALLY hoping that we can get ADSL at the new place...

Time is going so fast at the moment! I can't believe it's May already, and I can't believe that it's been over 2 months since my last update. I know I may have mentioned something about actually keeping this thing vaguely up to date, but life got in the way...

Anyway, it's not like I actually had much to write about - work is not doing much different (plus, LJ is blocked at work), and home life is humming along as normal.

Well, almost.

I have applied for a new job. The new job is actually in the same section that I work in right now, just doing much cooler stuff - all to do with intrusion detection and network security. I had my interview for this position today, and I think it went alright (much nodding and generally positive body language by the interviewers).

It is kind of freaky being formally interviewed by people you work with every day.

Now, let's see how long it'll be before my next entry *grin*

Well, my diet is going reasonably well, I've lost around 10KG so far. I've actually started jogging with the dog in the afternoon... sometimes.

On Fridays, a few of us get together at work and play a bit of sport, like 1/2 court basketball or have a bit of a hit at the cricket nets. I've decided to start going to the Gym on the base a couple of times a week with another person from my section. That should speed up the weight loss a bit :-)

I don't think I'm getting enough sleep, or something. I usually go to bed sometime around 11, and try to wake up at 6:45. This often turns into 7, as I have to turn the alarm off, or eozarth gets cranky, because she gets to sleep in. Meh. I'll survive.

The morning commute is about 30 minutes now, as an extension to Horse Park Drive has opened up, connecting to Majura road underneath the Federal Highway. That continues all the way to the airport. So, I get to avoid all the traffic on Northbourne Avenue in the morning. I hate traffic, and I like doing the speed limit (plus ;-)

A co-worker that lives near me is getting broadband as well, and we are considering setting up a WiFi link between us, so we can share some of that bandwidth goodness. If anyone has any idea how we can actually do this, please tell me.

I quite like living in Canberra. There's actually plenty of stuff to do, but I just haven't done it yet...

Not as much to say here, because my life pretty much consists of work and sleep :-)

We had our first house inspeciton a couple of weeks ago. The real estate agent really didn't like how we kept the garden (we hadn't touched it since we moved in), and advised that we had to fix it within 2 weeks, at which time he would be coming back for another inspection. We fixed it in time. It was hard work, though. We had to do a hell of a lot of pruning, and a hell of a lot of weed pulling. It cost us $80 to have all the garden waste taken away that we generated in those 2 weeks. When the real estate agent came back, he said that the garden looked quite good now, and that he would try to convince the owners to spring for a load of garden mulch for us to spread around, so we didn't have such a big weed problem.

The house inspection went fine, though. We kept the place reasonably clean. The new vaccuum cleaner that eozarth's mum bought us works very well, so we probably only need to call in professional carpet cleaning people every 6 months or so. How often to other people get professional carpet cleaning done?

During the inspection, we reminded the real estate agent that we needed a few things fixed, things that had been amiss since we moved in. Like the rear sliding door needs the proper key, the light switch in the ensuite bathroom needs to be fixed, and a few other little niggly problems.

It is a good thing that the weather is getting cooler now, as the computer room is on the western side of the house, and gets incredibly hot in the afternoon. In fact, the weather here is quite strange. One week we had mid to high 30's, the next week we had high teens to mid 20's. I think it will take a while to get used to Canberra weather.

I now have my security clearance! Yay! My thanks go to everyone involved (and there may even be one or two of you who read this)

Additionally, I have passed my 3 month probation, I'm now a real Australian Public Servant - your taxes pay my wages ;-)

I'm now working in the new NOC - I have commented on it in the past, late last November I think, read some of my previous posts for a description. The only difference is that there's a lot more people there now.

The following comments are my own observations and opinions, and do not represent the (official or otherwise) views, processes, procedures or opinions of my employer

There seems to be a few "bleeding hearts" around. Some people have complained about music playing, others have complained about various funny pictures being put up around the office. Bah. We usually comply with such requests in the interest of avoiding conflicts.

I found out something rather interesting in my probation report - I am meant to be managing my section, including the one other person working in it. That's news to me, I thought I was just working in the section. Because of that, it was noted that I was not communicating enough to higher management about what's going on. Thanks for telling me, guys... But, of course, I do not get a pay rise from my added responsibilities.

Work has been rather interesting. I'm learning quite a bit more about email than I ever thought I'd know, including a few new products that I've never used before. I'm also teaching some basic email theory to the person I'm meant to be managing. Unfortunately, it seems as he's just treating this posting as "just a job", and doesn't seem that interested. He does know what to do for a few simple tasks, though, so it's not as if he's completely useless. I think he's counting the seconds until his next posting.

The management is quite unique, as pretty much the whole management team changed in January. Most of them did not seem to have experience with managing civilians, and it took some getting used to on their part. An APS work day is 7 hours, 30 minutes, while a Military work day is 8 hours. The first time my direct boss checked our time sheets, he asked that very question. Military management seems quite different to Civilian management - if things don't get done, arses get kicked instead of questions being asked. Because of this, things get done quickly.

Every second fortnight, for a fortnight, I'm on call. I get paid extra for being restricted to be within 2 hours of work - the extra comes in rather handy. I don't mind it, though, as I never seem to go outside of Canberra anyway. I have even had an overtime session, orking a 16 hour day with only 2 breaks is NOT fun.

Anyway, that's about all for now on the subject of work.

Wow, where the hell did February go?! I feel like I just blinked, and it's March already.

Instead of writing one huge long entry, I'll go for a few shorter entries.

Oh my. I've discovered a nice little program called 'DOSBox', which is a MS-DOS emulator. I've also discovered a copy of Dune 2. Now THAT takes me back! I haven't played that game for... i don't know... about 12 years I think. Haven't RTS games come along way? I mean, the last RTS game I played was either Warcraft 3 or Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour (I can't remember, it may have even been on the same day).

Oh, the nostalgia!

Well, finally we have ADSL! I've been putting it through its paces, downloading heaps of stuff.

Unfortunately, I discover that my ADSL "modem" is actually a router! I specifically didn't want a goddamn router, as that is what the Linux box is for. Piece of crap. Oh well, I figured out how to "fix" it so that the "modem" is just that, a modem doing no login or anything. This way, I control exactly what goes in and out of my network, and at what speed!

Now all I have to do is wait for my downloads to finish, so I can start more downloads ;-)

Well, now this is "interesting"

Wednesday, I received an email saying that my ADSL service had been provisioned. Only problem is, I don't have an ADSL modem yet. I called Dart on Thursday to see when it would be coming. They said "Today, ring us tomorrow if it doesn't". Well, the obvious happened, it did not come on Thursday. I rang again on Friday, and after being put on hold and being disconnected a few times, the support person said "It should be there today, I'll get somebody to call you with the tracking number, he's just stepped out of the office". No call back, but at least the modem arrived on Friday afternoon.

Now, the fun begins. I hooked up the modem and the line filters as soon as I got home (Dart kindly supplied an extra filter, and I had bought another one, so I have 3 filters). The ADSL line sync light stayed dark. Uh-oh. I hooked up everything exactly as described in the manual, but still no line sync. Hm. I ran the diagnostics program, tried rebooting the modem, even tried connecting it as the only phone device in the house. Still nothing.

I rang Dart again, explained that I had no line sync after trying all of this. They escalated the call to Connect, who escalated it to Telstra. The Dart support guy said that if I was lucky, it would be fixed in under an hour, but call back tomorrow (Saturday) if it is still not working. I called back on Saturday, and was told that Telstra had to send a technician out on Monday to investigate the problem.

So, that's where my broadband stands at the moment. I am waiting for (please, $DIETY) good news tomorrow.

I REALLY hope that Telstra haven't done something stupid, like provision my service on someone else's phone number...

Well, ADSL has been activated on my phone line. All I need to do now is get the modem, and I will be laughing along at 512kbit/sec. Still doesn't quite compare with the 10mbit/sec that cable offered, but much better than 28kbit/sec on the slowdem.

Well, it's that time of year again, where I try to stick to a diet.

I'm trying The Hacker's Diet - How to lose weight and hair (just kidding) through stress and poor nutrition. The diet is quite simple.

(This is an American diet, I'll put in unit conversions where needed) Your body burns a certain number of calories per day. If you take in more calories than you need, you gain weight - if you take in less than you need, you lose weight. 3500 Calories (14651 kJ) equals 1lb (453 g) of fat. Reduce your calorie intake below what you need, and your body will use fat reserves to make up the defecit. Do this over an extended period of time, and you'll lose weight.

The diet also gives you tools to calculate how much you are losing, and how much you want to lose in a certain time.

There are a couple of problems, though, which the diet readily confesses:

• Because you are eating less calories than you need, you may feel hungry at times.


• You need to count calories, and keep your total daily intake less than or equal to your goal


• You need to weigh yourself every day


• You need to do some exercise, to stop your body from burning muscle instead of fat

Eoz and I are quite commited to the diet, and with good reason. We need to look our best (especially her :-) for our wedding. Which is later this year. Eep!

On our way to Belconnen, we were waiting at a set of lights which were armed with a red light / speed camera (red light cameras have speed cameras in them in the ACT). I was idly looking around, when I saw the camera flash...

At nothing.

There was nobody going through the intersection when the flash went, and there had not been anybody for at least 30 seconds, in any direction.

*shrug*

Another entry in the category "strange things Eoz and I say to each other".

We were driving to Belconnen to get shiny new ACT drivers licenses today. There is a set of lights at the intersection of Gungahlin Drive and Gundaroo Drive. We turn right off Gungahlin on to Gundaroo. Now, the turning arrow was green as I was approaching the intersection, but it changed to orange as I got close. Naturally (for most guys, anyway), I didn't slow down, I could make it through before the red. However, because I was turning instead of going straight through, and I was going relatively fast for the corner, the tyres started making an embaressingly loud squeeeEEEEEEE. Needless to say, I made it through on the orange - just.

After the corner, Eoz looks at me funny, like she always does when I take a corner fast. I say "what?". She says "Can't you stop being a guy?". Er...

I also told her that she should post it to her LJ, or I would. Oh well, I guess I just got in first ;-)

Yep, I'm joining that crazy club called overclockers. I'm normally more conservative than that, but this CPU was just sitting there, begging for it to be done. Also, I'm bored. My goal is 11 x 200, as that's what the guy from GameDude said it should reach. Hopefully, this particular CPU will make it there.

It is an Athlon XP "Barton" 2500 +, riding an Asus A7N8X revision 2. Stock is 11 x 166 with 1.65V. I first tried bumping the multiplier, this thing happily accepts 12.5 x 166. However, this is Not Good Enough(tm)! Too easy to get there, I need a challenge to ride out the rest of the stand-down period from work. Maybe I will bump up the multiplier a bit later as well.

Anyway, I'm being thorough, using SiSoft Sandra to benchmark every step of the way, and to test stability. I'm also keeping an eye on the temperature, as I really don't want to have a cooked CPU (touch wood). I can't afford a new one at the moment if I do.

I've been bumping up the FSB in 5MHz increments, keeping the RAM at 100% speed. I made it to 11 x 195 without touching the VCore when the machine wouldn't complete a burn-in Sandra test - it rebooted. So, upped the VCore to 1.675V, and it happily passes the burn-in. I think I'm starting to reach the limits of this chip. When I tried 11 x 200, the machine wouldn't POST, it kept probing the floppy drive in an infinite loop. So, reset the CMOS, bump up the VCore to 1.7V, and try again. Still no POST. Reset again, back down to 11 x 195, 1.675V.

This is where I'm up to. I'm just about to run 3DMark to make sure the machine really is stable.

I'm wondering what to try next. Maybe it is the CPU? Maybe it's the RAM? Maybe it is something else entirely. Whatever it is, it has to eat up another week's worth of time :-)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!!! Dialup is driving me mental!

(thanks to LJ's craptacular web interface, my original post has been eaten)

I really hope we can get ADSL. I applied for provisioning with Dart, and they usually keep their customers informed pretty well about what's happening with their application. Well, I hadn't heard from them for about a week, so I called them and asked what was going on. My application is in "alternate path checking" mode. This usually happens when there is no direct copper in between a house and an exchange, normally there's fiber somewhere in the path. I know that the whole suburb, and surrounding suburbs are on a giant RIM, because Telstra are cheap bastards and didn't cable a copper pair to every house. Oh well, they're first against the wall when the revolution comes...

Anyway, I'm still reasonably confident that we'll get ADSL, because of all these Mini-MUXes that are popping up on the streets very nearby. Hopefully I don't have to go down the "sign up with Telstra and churn as soon as possible" path...

28.8 is not bandwidth, no matter which way you look at it (unless you are a small pacific island or 3rd world country, in that case 28.8 is about all the bandwidth the country has). It is especially not enough for 2 people.

Well, it has been a fairly long time since an update, so here goes.

Eoz made it down here, see her journal for more detail. I really missed her. It's just not the same, chatting on the Internet.

I started work. Except, I couldn't get into some areas I needed to, because I did not have my security clearance completed. This is my second week, and the security issue has been corrected. Things should really get rolling now. I'm still rather impressed with all the forms that need to be filled in.

I forgot to meet up with Eoz at the bank today. I was in the process of sorting out the security access. Sorry! I don't think she's too grumpy about it, I'll just make something really nice for dinner.

I found out that a roadworthy check costs around $30, and most car workshops will do it. Good thing there's 2 workshops just down the road from work. I don't think I want to know how more insurance will cost me *shudder*

Meh, I rather dislike using a computer after using one for the whole day at work...

Y'know, it is amazing how much we rely on refrigerators. Having moved to Canberra ahead of Eoz and all the furniture, I have no fridge. It is rather painful.

Go ahead, take a look in your fridge. Most of that stuff, I can't have. No cheese, no butter, no milk, and NO MEAT! Everything I eat has to come out of a tin or a packet. If I do have meat, I have to buy it on the afternoon I am going to eat it, and hope like hell it isn't going to be a hot afternoon. I've come up with a guide for how to live without a fridge.

1. Ignore anything in the fridge or freezer section of the supermarket. This includes all dairy products, all fresh meat products, quite a lot of processed meat products, and most drinks that you like to have cold.
1a. Get things in section 1 if you are going to completely use them straight away, i.e. within an hour or two of getting home.

2. Check labels for anything that says "refrigerate", and don't buy them.
2a. If the phrase "best if" or similar appears in the same sentence as "refrigerate", then you can buy the item, but be prepared to use the item rather quickly.

3. Don't get anything that you would like to have cold. This includes things like beer and soft drinks. See section 1.

4. Anything else is fair game.

I've been living on tuna omlettes, tinned soup, baked beans, peanut butter sandwiches, and on rare occasions, steak sandwiches. Which is a pity, I love cooking, and the gas stove here is a dream to use!