McBlog

OK – it’s official – Yes, I’m SLACK!!!

What more can I say than it’s been one hell of a ride since Christmas. Hmmmm – where to begin…

First of all, my company Tao Ceti has been placed into liquidation by the tax office ‘cos they thought it was trading while insolvent. Go figure – there I was earning just enough to survive, cover current costs and start paying back a few debts, all while trying to get some new work in to rebuild from the past couple of problems but because I couldn’t give them their money immediately, bang, it was “shut you down boyo!”

At least the folks at Pitcher Partners have been very helpful in getting all the paperwork sorted out, contacting organisations the company owed, etc. Realistically, it was just me doing all the work so there wasn’t much to be wound up. Now to see what comes out when all the dust settles and the paperwork is officially completed.

The work at DHS fell through – warning – never get caught in politics when working for a friend at a government department. Second time it’s happened to me. Never again.

Fortunately, I’m still able to work with the AWU as “geek” (check out the details for more juice) plus I’ve been able to keep up the effort necessary for Toy Satellite’s projects – again, check out the details for more juice :)

As if all that wasn’t enough, I’ve been kept pretty busy lately working as part of the Platinum Exclusive team, putting on events and trying to grow a sustainable entity in the adult erotic lifestyle world. Amazing what you can wind up doing when you start DJ’ing in that scene :)

There is some escape time for me though – I’m still running a bunch of kids through a fantasy world setting that I’ve been creating. Role playing is great for stimulating creative thinking, problem solving and so on. Of course, as Game Master I’ve got a lot on my shoulders as I’ve chosen to create a whole world from scratch and have been building the modules the players explore myself. Still, it sure beats a fortnightly poker game or just sitting around watching TV :)

Finally, I’ve been running around a bit getting Nykolai’s passport and “permission to travel” forms ready – he and his mom are going to Argentina for a month on Wednesday next week (31st March). It’s all coming together but not without some time spent in waiting rooms.

So there you go – it’s certainly been a roller coaster ride since Christmas and it doesn’t show any signs of stopping. Personally, that’s a good thing – I’d get bored if it was all the same. Mind you, I certainly wouldn’t mind another relaxing Sunday like the one I managed to have a couple of weeks ago – it was one of the best days I’ve had in ages. Can’t wait to do it again :)

At last, a new mix is out – “Ten Pin Divas” has been released and people are starting to check it out. It was recorded live during one of my sets at Strike Bar on Chapel St. I’m not 100% happy with it as it’s a bit commercial and the sound quality in the middle gets a bit dodgy as I think I had “mega-bass” turned on while recording on the minidisc player. Whoops. Still, people seem to be liking it, so that’s a plus.

This mix now joins my previous two releases (“Poolside Divas” and “Santa’s Little Divas” – done back in 2002/2003) to continue the Divas series. I’m still working on those other mixes and expect to get them out in a similar fashion (eg: prepare them and then record them live at Strike :)

Wound up spinning at a private New Years Eve party at a house in South Yarra – it was an afterparty for Saints and Sinners so it didn’t really kick in until around 3:30am or so. I started DJ’ing around 2:30am and it was getting pretty full on around 5am – the tribal music really seemed to get everyone moving to the groove *coff coff*

After that I went to an afterparty for the afterparty that went all day at another house – I did two sets here but was getting pretty stuffed, so I just wound up being asked to control the CDs on the stereo and join in the fun with everyone else :)

Been a while since I made an entry here – a tad busy and hectic with lots of work to do and some travel around the place. Have survived the Christmas experience and enjoyed myself a lot. Yesterday was, in fact, the first day I’ve managed to feel relaxed for a while.

I’m in the process of loading up lots of photos, including my birthday party, the Monolake concert, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. If I get the chance, I’ll try to tidy up some of the other sections in the photo gallery so they’ve all got the same look. Scoot on over to the photos section to check them out.

The Monolake concert was great – I was involved over the whole weekend as Robert (Monolake) Henke’s driver. I picked him up at the airport, drove him around and we all had a great time.

My trip to Sydney was generally successful – the office is now using ADSL instead of a slow modem. Took a bit of effort but I put in (yet another :) linux based firewall, reorganised the network and started sorting out the workstations as well. I was unable to complete all the work I wanted though due to a hassle in Melbourne.
On the morning of my last day in Sydney, I received a call from the Melbourne office to say that they had no Internet connection, couldn’t print, couldn’t get shared drives, etc. Ooops. Fortunately I was able to get on a flight quickly and was back in the Melbourne office by midday.

A quick check of the servers revealed all was well so I recycled the switches and hubs to see if they were OK. Sure enough, one of them failed to restart properly, so I yanked it out and repatched everything across to the spare hub and one of the units with spare capacity. Admin staff were up and running quickly enough but it took until 7pm to get everything right (mostly because I took advantage of the moment to re-run some of the leads that were getting pretty messy).

A bonus was that the next day, everyone was reporting that the network was running much faster. Now I finally know what was causing that network slowdown… The dud switch is going to be replaced under warranty so I’ll try to do that while everyone’s away. At least everything’s working again (touch wood).

Things working OK – getting ready to go up to Sydney to work on a new ADSL link for the National Office up there. Murphy’s Law says that everything will go crazy in Melbourne while I’m in Sydney, just when I can’t do anything about it. Just you wait! :)

Working on some issues with the back-end of the AvantCard web site plus some general systems management work. The joys of being the SysOp :)

Had a blast at the first Platinum Exclusive event on Saturday night. Didn’t DJ but ran around helping to keep the DJ’s happy, caught up with friends and had a wonderful time. Thanks to Marlowe and Warren for a great night :)

Was invited out to spin at Edinburg Gardens on Sunday arvo. It’s a gathering of DJ’s every non-raining Sunday arvo down near the rotunda in the park. All are welcome and anyone can spin – even me! :) Much fun was had and mega-thanks to the gang for the invite and for making me feel so welcome – will definitely be trying to come down again on future Sundays…

Yes! Yes! Yes
The tech turned up on site to fix my DELL as advertised and it appears to have done the trick. The little bugger’s been working fine since then. Combine this with my new ADSL link at my home office and yes, I’m a happy little geek :)