Jonathan's Liverstone

Told you it was cold ...

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/28/2006 08:29:00 pm {0 comments }

Misguided Expenditure

I'm sure that hundreds of Xtra customers are going to be ecstatic over the news $20 Million Makeover For Xtra Email.
It might be good idea if even part of that was spent on upgrading their VERY shaky authentication servers. It was only a couple of weeks ago and there was a major with their servers taking out all new connections for long enough that customers are getting a (what) $3.00 refund? And I understand that the recent Telecom broadband upgrade was a bit of a nightmare for the contractor doing the customer upgrades. The change needed the connection to re-authenticate, and if they had done them all automatically, the Xtra authentication servers would have shit themselves.
Another example of big spending up front on the sexy looking stuff (what management & marketing can comprehend), and the back-room technology being held together with baling twine.

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/28/2006 07:55:00 pm {0 comments }

Plonkers

If you are misguided enough to want to check out what they are selling you might be tempted to type harveynorman.co.nz into a browser ... and you will get this load of bullshit:

You are seeing this page for one of two reasons:
* you were looking for this page and were advised to point to this page
* you have come to this page and are unsure why you are seeing this message.
If the former is true, your reasons for being here should be self evident. However, if the latter is true, it is likely that you have come to the incorrect page and should validate the IP you are trying to reach before attempting to access the site again.

Now in my books, that's not only arrogant, it's downright rude.
"validate the IP you are trying to reach" indeed!!!! So I guess you should have typed : "www.harveynorman.co.nz" (no link provided here) instead.
Is this arrant nonsense actually telling you anything useful, appart from the attitude of the sysadmin? It's certainly not supporting the hosted site with a helpful link or re-direct? No, these plonkers think they are so cool that they didn't know that www is depreciated!
... what do you expect from a bunch of shopkeepers?

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/28/2006 07:30:00 pm {0 comments }

Hairy-chested Sysadmin

I had to smile when I read the following in the syslog man pages

Step 5. Use step 4 and if the problem persists and is not secondary to a rogue program/daemon get a 3.5 ft (approx. 1 meter) length of sucker rod* and have a chat with the user in question.
Sucker rod def. — 3/4, 7/8 or 1in. hardened steel rod, male threaded on each end. Primary use in the oil industry in Western North Dakota and other locations to pump ’suck’ oil from oil wells. Secondary uses are for the construction of cattle feed lots and for dealing with the occasional recalcitrant or belligerent individual.

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/25/2006 04:09:00 pm {0 comments }

Talk about COLD!

A satellite image from last Monday.
... now I know it was cold, & there's more coming this week!

via Scoop

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/20/2006 09:48:00 pm {0 comments }

Symmetrical

A symmetrical palindrome in Kilbirnie.

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/18/2006 05:49:00 pm {0 comments }

Who's Helen's Webmaster?

A posting by David Farrar on creating content for the Prime Minister's web-site caused me to re-visit the site to see if there had been any improvement.
No there hasn't.
The front page is still an access nightmare, with the only navigation being java menus.
The "authors" obviously had not understanding of web standards.
The rest of the site has nasty frames control and basically it's a pretty looking mess, so I decided to post a comment on their comments page.
and ... oh dear me!

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/11/2006 06:50:00 pm {1 comments }

Dog Owners ... Grrrr!

I dispair of finding responsible dog owners!
Twice this week I have met with ignorance bordering on stupidity.
In the Rimutakas we came across a couple with a Labrador pup, running through the area where kiwi have just been released. They didn't have the dog on a leash, and at that age, it was certainly not under control.
Then out at Sinclair Head, there were two lots of people with untethered dogs, despite the fact that dogs should be on a leash year-round, and are not permitted in the vacinity of the seals during the winter months.
These people seem to think that the rules don't apply to them and their lovable bowzer.
... prats!

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/11/2006 05:01:00 pm {0 comments }

Sinclair Head

Sunday is a good day to go for a walk out to Sinclair Head on the Wellington south coast.
Why Sunday? Because that's the day that the council doesn't let the mobility-impaired 4-wheel drive morons onto that part of the coast, so it's walkers & bikers only. It's about 2-3 hours return by foot from Owhiro Bay.
On the way you pass Red Rocks ... which really are red ... some kind of red greywacke.

At Sinclair Head itself, during the winter the fur seals bask on the rocks.

These guys (all males) hang out here over winter (May - August) to put on condition before heading off for breeding during the spring and summer.
I guess that's where they differ from human males, who seem to head *to* Wellington for the purposes of ... ah well ...

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/11/2006 04:30:00 pm {0 comments }

Rimutaka Walking

We went for a walk in the Rimutaka Forest Park today. Mid-week it's nice & quiet.
It only takes a couple of hours to go from the carpark to the Orongorongo River Valley.
Well, it would take most people that long, but I tend to indulge in a bit of botanizing as we walk & it can slow things down quite a bit.
There is the obligatory Tmesipteris spotting. It's kinda special 'cos it's the most primitive of the ferns (first entry in H.H.Alan "Flora of New Zealand") and you can usually find it on tree fern trunks, so I like too be able to "notch it up" on each trip.
This time, however, the exciting find was a clump of Dawsonia moss. This is the *biggest* moss in the world, and, yup, it's a native of N.Z. The clump I found is right in the side of the path so it's liable to fall victim to the scrub cutters of the track maintenance team. In this clump, each stem is 30cm tall (the matchbox is the universal scale indicator).


Dawsonia superba	Raukawa Lodge

I've aways been impressed by the canny locations that are chosen for tramping huts, just out of trouble, but still in the middle of things. It seems that the placement of this one wasn't quite so well thought through, and it is going to have to be re-locationed (soon).

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/07/2006 08:27:00 pm {0 comments }

Ready for Service

Somethings seem to take a little while.
I finally got frustrated enough with the old dial-up to sign up for a DSL account.
I was finding that connecting to blogger was virtually off limits during evening rush hours (anything international which wasn't cached seemed to take forever.)
So ...
I have an invoice which says that I signed up for this internet thingy 14/06/95.
I have been working directly with xDSL manufacture, supply & support since 1998
and now on the auspicious date of 06/06/06, my Telecom cable pair is "RFS" (Ready for Service).
It might not be blazingly fast (it's NZ "broadband" at 2Mb), but it fixed the problem with access to the blogger site.

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/06/2006 10:14:00 pm {0 comments }

Disclaimer: (I stole this from Internal Affairs.)
All links and references to other websites, organisations or people not within my control are provided for the user's convenience only, and should not be taken as endorsement of those websites, or of the information contained in those websites, nor of organisations or people referred to. I also do not implicitly or impliedly endorse any website, organisation or people who have off-site links to this website.
... But then again; I only link to sites 'cos I see something there that's worth linking to.