An Ode to Pie

Pie.

It makes me cry.
When I have no Pie.

I might die.
Without Pie.

Pie.

Nice Weekend

Well.

Very cool Friday night - caught up with a few people I haven't seen in ages.
Saturday spent sleeping and recovering, and then went to a party at a friends house.
Was mostly older people (early 30's).
Plenty of chefs, some TVNZ people, artists, musicians etc.
Theres something about that social group that appeals, but sometimes they can be a little too "wanky" for my taste.

It looks like InternetNZ has approved the creation of the parliament.nz 2LD.
Nothing released on their website, or the DNC's, but reading through the meeting minutes reveals it was approved some months ago.
More 2LDs of course yield more revenue for the Registrars and more choice for consumers.
On the other hand they tend to lead to duplication of domain names, and an increase in 'squatting' as companies try to obtain every iteration of their company name.

Speaking of domain names, I've been working on a side project, on and off for the last few months.
Most ISPs I have seen tend to have a slightly disorganised approach to Domain Hosting and DNS updates.
Typically their billing system, and email provisioning system is not linked to their NS servers directly (sensible!)
What the leads to however, is problems with:

Customers being billed for hosting after the domain name is transferred away
Mail servers still being setup to deliver mail for the domain locally
Customers not being billed for a hosted domain
ISP still being charged by a Registrar (if they are not one themselves) but the custy has changed the authoriative servers, and is no longer being billed by the ISP.

So - what I think is needed is a simple tool to receive inputs from two places:
ISP Billing/Provisioning System
NS - List of domains they think they are authorative for

The tool would then query the .nz root servers to see who the 'actual' host of the domain is, and output a list of domains that need to be de-provisioned, billed, or otherwise checked up on.
I'm trying to think of better ways to do it without querying the root servers constantly (local DNS server with no cache ?) and am building in a few safeguards around the number of queries/s etc.
Once I have things a bit more polished, I'm planning to approach the NZSRS people and ask about acceptable load on their servers, or if they can think of a cleaner way to do it.

I feel naughty

Everyone now and then I like to dob someone in for something.
Nothing too serious - just to exercise my civic muscle.

There is a foodcourt down the road from my house that is seriously dodgy! I've managed to force myself to eat there once, and only when I was really desperately hungry.

Last week I had a hankering for some asian food and thought I would give it another go.
While waiting for my order I saw a cockroach, crawl across a table with vegetables on it and scurry under the fridge.
This didn't seem to upset any of the staff.

I sent a nice polite email to the good folks at the Auckland City Council, and didn't really expect much to happen.
To my surprise, I got an email back tonight saying they would be sending someone round to investigate, and would let me know how it turns out.

lol

First (Laptop) Post

Finally purchased a Laptop - something I should have done ages ago!
From Foodtown of all places, they seem to sell everything these days.
Bread, Milk, Laptop. It made sense at 3am.

I've begun learning Python:

python.org

Which is becoming addictively frustrating.
There is something about computer programming languages that seems to not want to stick in my brain.
Probably one of those left lobe right lobe thangs.

Customers Rant Gone Wrong?

I came across this thread on a forum I frequent:

nzgames.com

One of the forum members received 'perceived' poor service from a helpdesk worker and posted about it.
The nature of the forum is such that many people in the industry read it, and at some stage the thread was forwarded onto the helpdesk worker concerned.
He emailed the admin of the site asking for the thread to be taken down, but unfortunately added the age-old "legal action" threat at the end of his email.

While it's natural for people to complain about the service they receive from various companies, and online forums are one place to do this - I would always be hesitant in naming a person on a forum (even by their first name) which I think is unnecessary.
Sure this helpdesk guy may have made a mistake in troubleshooting or diagnosing the issue, and yes maybe some serious re-training is needed.
The onus of that should be born by his manager and the department he works in, it should be up to them to identify the training needs of staff and develop them as necessary.

The poster of the thread should simply have contacted the company concerned and passed on his feedback, rather than making a big chest puffing thread about it.

In all I feel sorry for the guy that was named, and would be upset if one of my staff were ridiculed like that on a popular online forum.

Epiphyte (2)

The movie Phone Booth:

imdb.com

Is so an ode to the Helpdesk Worker.

Man can't leave the phone booth (call centre cubicle)
Forced to listen to someone who he can't hang up on (customer)
Threatened (angry customer)
Shot at (angry customer who has been 5th in the queue for 22 minutes)

Epiphyte

Busy ... few months.

I was never very good at routine, so no surprise at the lack of entries.
Work has been hectic. Actually Work (#2) has been hectic. My 9-5 office job has been meh as usual.

I came up with a weird and wacky idea mid-way through last year.
While I'm always hesitant to use the word "portal" (don't laugh) it is very portalish.

This is my second foray into the 'Business World' and the first did not go well.
As usual I had a crazy idea, incorporated a company with a suitable accomplice, and waited for fame, glory and world domination to roll our way.
Except (luckily, this time) shortly after commencing, I met a few real business people, who had been there and done "it" before.

We now have a mentor who is the CEO of a major financial services company, and who turns out to be Anthony Robbins like in his motivational skills.
Unfortunately for the lazy person in me, this has resulted in 2 months of late nights.
It's been basically come home from work, eat dinner, create content and review the web designers code until 1am (repeat 6-7 days a week)

This has of course resulted in a few late starts at my 9-5 job, and perhaps given the appearance that I "don't give a s***"
The problem is that I do still enjoy my role there, and can see it developing into something interesting in the next 6-12 months.

Balancing this stuff is hard.

But, on the good news front the project is nearing completion.
Late last month we showed a demo to the Marketing Department of a large Telco.
They've commited to purchasing advertising space on our site for 3 months, with an option for another 3 months depending on traffic generated in that time.
This makes it sooo much easier to sell to other advertisers with them as an example client.
We were expecting to give away advertising initially, so to have money coming in from Day One is a bit of a coup!

H2O

What do you do when the water goes off in an Apartment Building ?

Apparently you're not supposed to scream like a girl and wake up the neighbours.

Well after debating whether to bother the landlord this late at night, I stepped outside for a smoke.
Straight into two police cars which had blocked off the road, and a bunch of men in fluro jackets standing around looking puzzled.

Much excitement and heavy machinery taking place outside.

The Joys of Monday

Another Monday gone.

I wonder how many Mondays you get in a lifetime, and whether every day in hell is Monday ?

It actually wasn't too bad as far as work goes.

Do Pedophiles have rights ?

*dictionary.com indicates it's pedo, but the Herald says paedo - NZ/US English differences ?

This story today in the NZ Herald raise some important issues:

nzherald.co.nz

In theory this person has served out their sentence as prescribed by our justice system, and hopefully has undergone some form of rehabilitation and been deemed fit to return to society.
Is it fair to then publicise this fact, and create a culture of fear and hatred in their community ?

If the police are worried about them re-offending and feel the need to warn parents in the area, why is this person at large in society anyway ?

Why do we target Pedophiles specially ?
Should we publicise the names of convicted murderers and rapists and warn citizens when they are released ?

If we're going to treat these released criminals like that, it might be better to give them a life sentence with no parole to begin with.
Rather than pretending that they can resume their 'normal' lives.

Our tax dollars at work ...

Heres a link to an article published today in the Herald about a new book on Maori Health:

nzherald.co.nz

Some choice quotes from the book:

Maori enjoy life. Maori like to smoke. Maori like to eat. Maori like to drink. Maori enjoy sex. Maori like to talk. Maori like to gamble and take risks. And Maori like to fight, on and off the sports field...

If Maori enjoy it, the Crown is against it. If Maori have it and want it, the Crown tries to take it away. We support the choice of the overwhelming majority of our community to smoke. It is one way that Maori can say 'Stuff you' to the health Nazis and have a good time.

Is this satire or lunacy ?
It was published by a Maori Health Provider which is tax payer funded - what a waste of money!

Here's another quote from the book:

The health system sees diabetes as a consequence of Maori being fat and lazy and not having enough willpower to do what they need to do.
We are critical of the house niggers who preach this Pakeha message to Maori.

Found the details of the book:

ISBN / ISSN:
0476015723

Title: Maori Health

Paperback
Author: Peter Caccioppoli & Rhys Cullen
Published by: Kotahitanga Community Trust

I ordered a copy from: booksnz.com
Should be an interesting read!

New Blogger Syndrome

The compulsive urge to update the internet reading public with your daily bowel movements!

But no - if you do stumble across this tangled web of leftover writers block, please consider clicking on the ad banner at the top of the blog.
And thank you Google for providing this free service (we love ya big guy!)

I had an interesting encouter with an online gambling site recently.
After checking the various laws here in New Zealand, it appears it is not illegal to engage in online gambling - so long as the website is hosted overseas.
We have some pretty strict laws regarding the promotion and running of gambling, and this is different from what I thought earlier.
So I signed up, and lost some money (around NZ$100).

I forgot all about the site, and went on my merry way, until I checked my credit card statement yesterday.
It appears that all of the payments I made to that site have been refunded to my credit card.
I then tried to log back into my account on the site and found it had been locked and was 'under investigation'.

Cool I thought ! Gambling with no risk!

I got curious tho, and emailed the site, asking for more information.
Apparently it has been referred to their 'Risk Analysis Team' and they will be in contact via email.
I've also asked my bank to look into who reversed the CC payments (the site, or the bank at the other end)

Should be interesting, although I have visions of a casino goon squad kicking in my door and demanding payment.

I don't think theres much they could do to try and get the money (this is assuming it wasn't the site that reversed the payment) - I wonder what overseas companies can do in terms of using our credit rating and debt collection systems ?

Should be amusing at any rate.

Dance Fever

Why does it always rain on me ?

Well, it dosen't, not literally - but still.
The New Zealand Election has been and gone, but still lingers like some uninvited guest at a party.

At least we're not as badly off as our friends the Germans, who gave us MMP then proceeded to show the world how it could turn a country on it's ass.

I lean towards Labour, mostly because I feel like a caring sharing kinda guy.
I'd happily pay more tax if it meant that our health, education and justice systems were sorted out - unfortunately there seems to be so much waste and excess.