The Foodquest entry
21st century power reliablilty
You would think that living in a major city (the fourth biggest in the Australia) in a first world country that the power companies could manage to have a reliable supply.
So why is it that i find myself blogging, yet again, about the undependable source.
There is a jolly good reason I run a Uninterruptable Power Supply on my main computer and my router and that is because the power in this house can just cut out for anywhere between half a second and 15 seconds.
This morning it was much longer so I guess that qualifies as a power cut rather than just an interruption.
I got woken at 6.15 by the beep beep beep of the UPS and tried hard to go back to sleep, but I just wasn’t tired any more so I laid in bed instead.
It would have been nice to get up and do some cleaning or something while there were no distractions but it’s just past the winter solstice and with no lighting and no power for the electronic ignition on my gas heater, staying warm in bed seemed like a better option.
I did end up falling back to sleep an hour later and now I have that muzzy dull feeling that I often get when I drift back off to sleep after I really should have got up
The power came back on just after 9am.
Double value
I have a client. In fact, my first client, and he’s somewhat tardy about paying his account.
The current account in question is for his site hosting and it was getting more and more overdue.. Six weeks in fact!
I have taken to calling him but every time I do I get responses like “F*^$ me, I totally forgot” followed by promises to put the cheque in the mail that day.
I finally decided that enough was enough and on Thursday, one week after I had made the last phone call to him, I suspended his account taking his website off line and more importantly his email service.
I was half expecting a phone call from him asking what had happened to his email but it never arrived.
Friday morning the cheque was in my PO box!
I was still feeling elated about that 20 minutes later when my phone rang and it was the office wanting to ask me a question about a misplaced bag.
I pick up some internal mail bags at the airport for a couple of different companies and take them out to our depot and sort them out. Unfortunately when I was picking up the bags for one company, I ended up with just one from the other and it got delivered to the wrong place.
100% my fault and I accepted that and apologised for it.
“Oh Ok, no problem but you do need to be more careful when sorting out the mail” was the reply
Sure, I accept that and I really don’t make big mistakes at work, but I am not perfect and sometimes these things happen. I mentioned that I was careful and it was just one of those things and they were happy with that..
Then they kindly let me know that they wouldn’t charge me for the mistake.
…
How generous!
I guess it’s kind of like waving a red flag at a bull because I pounced on it. I politely reminded them that I don’t get paid for either of the customers that were concerned. You could almost hear him choke on his words!
“What do you mean you don’t get paid” he asked, giving me the perfect opportunity to make a point.
It was one of those things that was piggybacked onto a different run on the basis that I “go there anyway” so it would not be any problem.
I took that chance to make further criticisms about the situation with unpaid work which thoroughly brightened my morning.
Haloscan Comments
One of the things that I want to get running again is the Haloscan commens that I have used in the past .
It appears to be something in the Joomla CMS that is upsetting the applecart and stopping comments from working.
For some reason it is adding the URL into the href, even though it is not called in the code, thus disabling the comments.
For example, my archived posts used this piece of html and php to call up the comments link –
Comments on <a xhref=”javascript:HaloScan(‘<? echo”$blog_title” ?>’);”>
where the php variable was the name of the post for automating the comments and the javascript call is included at the top of the page.
Under the old site this still works fine, but in joomla instead of returning html to the browser that might say Comments on <a xhref=”javascript:HaloScan(‘post name’);”> I end up with Comments on <a xhref=”http://juslooken.com/javascript:HaloScan(‘post name’);”>
Enter the 404!
Smokin’
This is not a foggy morning. This is smoke haze caused by CALM controlled burn off’s. It’s very unusual at this time of year to have smoke haze as normally it is something we get in summer, usually caused by a temperature inversion.
Annoyingly, yesterday I did 3 loads of washing and left it on the line overnight because it was not yet dry so now I have to wash it all again to get the smoky fragrance out of my clothing.
Inspiration and Encouragement
Basic Skills
Reading – Can read well but he must read more loudly
Number – On the whole steady progress, but he is too old to still be writing his figures the wrong way.
Handwriting – He does not always work to the best of his ability.
Creative Ability
Original writing – At times quite good ideas spoilt by careless writing.
Art and Handwork – He enjoys this subject.
Mime and Drama – The required effort is not always made.
Singing – Could be good if he did not, at times, drift off into his world of fantasy.
Social Attitudes
Obedience – On the whole, satisfactory
Kindness to others – He likes to help with classroom duties.
Order and neatness – He must try to be neater with his written work
Application to work – At times, strict supervision required to keep his mind on his work, otherwise he would drift off to “dreamland”
Attendance and punctuality – Excellent
While cleaning up some stuff in my room today I came across my old school reports. I thought I would share this one with you. It was from a teacher called Miss Barker and she was my first grade teacher. I was 5 years old when I first went into her class.
From the old school of teaching, she would criticise, use sarcasm and she was very scary.
I had to chuckle over this report, especially the drifting off to dreamland, something that I still do to this day. I know it used to annoy the heck out of bitch-ex.
I remember once asking her where the pencils were, only to be informed that they were on the roof. I guess I would have looked quizzically at her because her next sentence was “Well, ask a silly question..”
Barker was an appropriate name..
Photoquest Teaser
With Photoquest heading into the kitchen this month I thought I would put a couple of teaser photos up for you. It’s cake time
Lighting the candles
Is that all for me?
All Ok
I received news on Tuesday morning that my friends in Yogyakarta are safe. They have had some minor damage to their house but apart from that all is good.
I meant to actually blog that on Tuesday but then I got caught up with the coding and admin for the return to Photoquest.
Further work demands from web clients has kept me busy too. Busy and very happy that the business is picking up.
I have more to say but it can wait!
Photoquest Returns
After a small absence Photoquest has returned to a new home, right here on juslooken.com
You can access and upload your URL by clicking on the photoquest link in the left hand menu or by going to http://photoquest.juslooken.com
Photoquest is a simple and fun photo meme. We hope you enjoy it
(It’s gone again – but it may return)
