McBlog

I went to the “Wrath” party at Abode on Saturday night (the second of the Deadly Sins events) to catch up with friends and have fun. Wound up staying most of the night and into the recovery party the next morning where I was offered the chance to take the “final DJ” set from about 9am to 11am. After a quick run home to get my gear (it’s only a few blocks away) I plugged in and kept everyone going with a dark tribal/speed-garage/doof set. Much fun and a good chance to try out a couple of new tracks.

Of course, after this and some work on Sunday helping a friend with his computer and plugging more RAM into the c2o.org server, I was exhausted and had to skip the chance to spin down at Strike. Given I’ll be up in Sydney next weekend it looks like I’m going to miss a couple of my Sunday sessions. C’est la vie.

I’ve been helping a friend with his computer woes – looks like either the hard drive or the controller on the motherboard has died. He’s got a couple of drives in there but it won’t boot and FDISK can’t find a fixed disk. Oops.

I picked up his machine on Friday night and took it down to my hardware supplier for examination on Saturday morning. While it’s away, I’ve loaned him an old laptop of mine so his partner can work on her assignments, do emails, etc. Went over to install it on Saturday night. All the time I’ve been over there, he’s keeping me going with drinks and dinner, etc – neat.

Later on Saturday night, I went into Club UK to help out with their computer woes. Caught up with a few people I hadn’t seen for a while which was great plus got a few beers for my troubles.

It’s all rather like “singing for my supper” and helps me get some socialising in without costing me anything – very handy at the moment when my pockets are empty.

We’ve now completed the transition to Zone Edit for our secondary DNS and mail services. There’s still a few minor issues to clear up but otherwise it’s done.

This should ensure that if our server is uncontactable for whatever reason, our domains don’t miss their emails, etc.

The hardware support guy representing Dell arrived with a new power pack – all systems go! He also had a spare motherboard in case the fault was the power connection on the current one. Handy.

At least my computer’s back and running again…

While talking to Dell support, I had to move the power pack so I could read out some codes/numbers on it. Shame, actually, as I’d just got the damned thing working. Of course, after moving it around, I couldn’t get any power to flow again. Next thing you know, while trying to twist the cable around and get things going again, the cable broke entirely.

Whoops…

At least the problem’s no longer intermittent :)

Well, my Dell laptop has found yet another way to piss me off. The external power adaptor has died – the lead coming out of the adaptor and going to the computer must be fraying inside or coming loose – I have to twist the lead around and/or tuck it back out of the way before power flows to the computer.

I’ve called Dell tech support, jumped through the hoops and now we wait for the new unit to arrive. Meanwhile my laptop’s dead in the water and I’m having to use machines from other people. Hope it doesn’t take too long to replace. At least I have a “next business day” warranty so I’m not out of pocket…

The Mayday party finished some time on the Saturday morning – not sure exactly when as I’d left around 5:30am to get some rest before a big day. All reports indicate that it was a good event.

The past couple of weeks have been incredibly busy due to APC.au and AWU work. It’s made it very hard to focus on the various things I should be doing for Platinum.

The recent changes made to block IPs that fail a Reverse DNS appears to be working. People are reporting significantly reduced levels of SPAM and we’ve not had any reports of valid emails being blocked. The inbound bandwidth levels have also dropped significantly.

To celebrate Andrew’s birthday, we all went out to a great Asian restaurant (via the pub :) where we proceeded eat great food (mostly duck) and drink Zubrowka :)

A great night was had by all – even those of us who had to leave early and couldn’t make the fun.