An Aussie geek stuck in Texas

I have wanted to love Audible for the longest time but I just can’t get into it. The first attempt I had a year or so ago wasn’t successful mainly due to their lack of content so I just tried the 2 free audio book trial and then closed my account, this time around I have hung around as a premium subscriber and have like 6 audio-books now but haven’t listened to any of them.

This is strange as one of the audio-books is “Brilliance of the Moon” by Lian Hearn, which is the final book of the Tales of the Otori, a trilogy of books based upon feudal Japan that I read in print just as fast as I could as they were so hard to put down. With the audio-book though I can never get into it.

I guess it has a lot to do with not having a long commute to work, I just jump on the light rail and I’m there in 10 - 15 minutes, hardly long enough to listen to an audio-book. I try listening to them at home but I can’t focus just on something I am hearing so I always get distracted, even when I had half an hour on a bus as a commute my thoughts would drift too much to focus on it so I guess Audible might just not be my cup of tea….

I think I saw something about this on Slashdot a while back so I signed up for it and ended up getting invited for the beta but I suspect everyone that signed up got an invite. What it is essentially boils down to an alternative to the iTunes Music Store that actually works similar in regards to finding the songs you want unlike the abomination that is Napster, the prices are the same as well but they are all in protected WMA format and hence not compatible for the iPod so that is a bit of a major stumbling block for me.

The BIG difference though that makes Peer Impact unique is that it uses a kind of P2P network when downloading purchased songs so instead of all downloads coming from the central server you can get them off of peers that have already purchased the song and if you happen to be someone who provides the download then you are provided with a credit in your account to go toward future purchases.

I haven’t been that interested in it though due to the protected WMA format so I haven’t researched how much the credits are nor how does the DRM work if you download the song from someone else where that song would need to already have DRM applied to it. Is it just that the DRM is generic for everyone or are they silly enough to remove the DRM, send it over the wire and then add back the DRM like the currently exploited iTunes Music Store does?

If anyone actually uses Peer Impact regularly and has more insight then I’d love to hear your comments!

I’m posting an open question about this as we are having a lot of difficulty locating the kind of expertise we require for Technical Support Consultant positions we have been trying to fill here in Houston for quite some time now. We have tried various postings on monster.com & careerbuilder.com and have also tried using agencies but we just can’t seem to attract the right kind of person.

Background: We are a medium sized IT company providing software solutions for Health Environment and Safety plus more recently Risk Management based in Perth, Australia that is expanding into North America and other markets with a recently established office in Houston. Currently our work load isn’t that bad but in the coming months we are predicting more clients to come on board and expect the office here along with our support team to rapidly expand.

What we are after is someone to head up our helpdesk operations here in Houston providing support both internally and to clients for a mixture of environments including J2EE based web applications, VB (currently 6 migrating to .NET) based client/server applications running on the different flavours of Windows using Oracle or SQL Server as the database backend. We’re not even after specific experience in those environments just similar would be fine as those kind of skills easily adapted.

We also want someone that is able to:

- Perform configuration work by using our own design tools
- Write Javascript & VB script
- Report/graph writing
- Write some SQL for analysis and fixing of problems in the backend
- Install software such as a JDK/JRE, Apache Tomcat, our web application and our client/server tools
- Perform some database administration - mainly backing up & restoring databases.
- Work both independently and as part of a team
- Troubleshoot problems using the materials & resources available

What we don’t want is a high level technical consultant that doesn’t get involved in areas such as the above nor do we want someone to act just as a manager, we need someone that is able to hit the ground running with a minimum of instruction, but of course we aren’t just going to throw someone into the deep end without any support. A degree is not a necessity and in fact we will place relevant experience above a degree.

We are willing to pay at or above the current market rate and provide full training in our product so if you have any ideas on how to advertise for such a position, know someone who is suitable or think you are suitable for the position then please contact me.

I recently donated some web hosting to give wiki.kde.org a new home and Luci, the site’s administrator has just finished transferring everything across and now we are just waiting for the DNS to update.

Kudos to Luci for getting the transfer done without a hitch and for Navindra for providing the previous hosting and assisting the move from the dot.kde.org server.

Hopefully the new web host will provide better uptime and performance as it won’t be competing for bandwidth/CPU cycles with the Dot, if all goes well then if other *.kde.org sites require assistance with hosting I can look at donating for them as well. On that topic if anyone is looking for assistance then please let me know.

Megan’s mum was in town this weekend along with her aunt to see the Cartier exhibit at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston and hence was able to take back some of the furniture from Megan’s place that just wouldn’t cut it in the new place so that left us missing some of the essentials like a coffee table.

So of we go to Eurway as we had exhausted all the local stores, it was quite the drive to get out there but boy was it worth it and we both wish we had gone there in the first place. It’s like an Ikea for grown ups, it is all good quality, stylish (featuring some pieces from the Museum of Modern Art, NY) AND relatively cheap.

We walked away with two book cases, a funky lamp, two end tables (trust me they look a LOT better in person) and a very cool coffee/cocktail table, it isn’t listed on their website but it is like I guess bell shaped pieces of glass a larger top one that is clear with another smaller one with frosting that is attached at the narrow end underneath that uses wheels to swivel out. I know hard to imagine it looking good from the description but we were both all over it as soon as we saw it.

So 5 days until we get the keys and then the day after that we move!

Well on the way to one of our favourite bars tonight (The Copa Room) we took the usual shortcut of turning left onto Brazos from Elgin even though recently we had stopped doing so due to fear of getting a ticket (there is a no left turn sign there for some reason) and well there was something like 3 police cars there booking people. 3 police cars dedicated to booking people that are safely turning onto a street just because there is a sign there saying not to do it hence making it illegal, haven’t the police in Houston got anything else better to do like to fight actual crime? If I see one more Houston cop directing traffic for a friggin parking garage I’m going to scream (yes I know they do this privately but they still wear their uniform and their gun for crying out loud, how in the heck do they ever get away with that???).

Anyway the main point of this rant is the way they issue tickets for moving violations here, they don’t actually give you a fine but instead a court date so if you like you can show up to contest it or you can go into the court and pay the fine. Like WTF? Just give a damn fine so it can be paid online or over the phone and then if someone wants to contest it then they can take it to court.

I really wonder sometimes how Houston manages to exist with the level of stupidity that is present in this city…

For the longest time my manager and I have been on a quest to find Victoria Bitter (the real way you say beer in Australia, despite what the false advertising would have you believe) in the USA and until now have always ended up out of luck. We finally struck gold though, it’s expensive to get but damn well worth it, one case of 24 375ml cans is setting us back USD60 plus another 20 for shipping so that sounds like a lot for one case of beer compared to what you pay in a supermarket here but it still works out less than your average beer from a bar so it’s not that bad.

Right now I am eagerly awaiting a tracking number so I can track our beer’s progress from California to Texas via FedEx and hopefully we will receive it by the weekend or at least on Saturday as…

“A hard earned thirst needs a big cold beer, and the best cold beer’s VICâ€?

and

“You can get it any old how, Matter o’ fact, I got it nowâ€?

I would like to know exactly where cell phone manufacturers get their figures for call and stand-by time when it comes to battery life? With the phone I have now a Motorola V220 the Stand-by time is quoted at 10 days, 10 days??? Is that in Binary or what? I hardly use my phone, I just have the occasional quick call and send the occasional text message and my battery life is lucky to last 2 days at the absolute maximum and that is after having the battery replaced.

What happened to the days of phones like the legendary Nokia 8210 (I think that’s the right model, the little one with a blue screen)? That phone used to be a little workhorse and it’s battery would last the better part of a week even while it was being used sporadically. Who really cares about having a camera and a colour LCD in their phone?

Now stop and think about that question for a moment, temporarily erase all the advertising BS that gets rammed down our throats about camera phones being the best thing since sliced bread and think how you actually use your phone and how you would like to be able to use it. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a small (but not too small) phone you can keep in your pocket or purse for the ladies that doesn’t cause a big bulge and not have to worry about hooking it up to the mothership to charge every night?

The camera in the V220 is so crap that the argument that it’s good to take spontaneous photo’s at parties and isn’t valid, that is unless your parties are under flourescent lights or in sunlight, so the only thing I do use it for is to replace the traditional photo in my wallet of my girlfriend and that just isn’t a conmpelling feature as printing a photo to put in my wallet isn’t enough of an inconvenience for me to want to suffer through a chunky phone with poor battery life.