Monteith's Brewery Tour

While in Greymouth, Anisha and I had the opportunity to visit the Monteith's Beer factory. For the small sum of $NZ12.50 each, we were given a tour of the beer making facility. I learned the fact that beer is 90% water! After the beer tour, we were treated to some tasting of seven different beers. I particularly liked the Monteith's Ridler.


Video: Monteith's Brewery Tour

Useless Information: A drink used to be made by the Aztecs for the gods which had the ingredients of ground cocoa mixed in with spices and corn.

A Summary of Events (Trip to Greymouth)

Christchurch

- Addington Stadium Motel
- Bus trip into the city centre
- The Arts Centre - Fudge
- Punting on the Avon
- Cathedral Square
- The TransAlpine to Greymouth

Greymouth

- Alpine Rose Motel
- Monteiths Brewery Tour
- Car rental from Europcar
- Shantytown
- Virginia and Jasons Wedding (Holy Trinity Anglican Church)
- Wedding Reception (Moonlight Hall)
- Breakfast with Geraldine, Virginia, and Jason
- Trip to Punakaiki Pancake Rocks and Blowholes

Wellington

- Meeting Anishas parents and family
- Went to visit Anishas friend Alpa
- Went to Te Papa
- Maranui Cafe - Big Day Breakfast
- Trip to Anishas Dads Dairy
- Drove past Peter Jacksons film sets and Weta Digital
- Went to Anishas old work (California Garden Centre)



A Small selection of photos from the trip. Almost 200 more of this trip are available in my Photo Gallery! [Requires Account]

A special thanks is due to Nigel for picking us up from the Airport.

Useless Information: In 1785, the city of Paris removed bones from cemeteries to ease the overflow of dead people. They took these bones and stacked them in tunnels now known as the Catacombs. You can visit these tunnel attractions and work your way along long corridors, which are stacked with skulls and bones.

GeekGear.co.nz - Celebrating all things Geek

As part of his induction training, Robert Redgwell has had the opportunity to observe our fantastic support team in action.

Robert is the latest Software Engineer to join our development team. Robert has a number of other ventures outside of work, including a number of websites he has developed.

Robert maintains a blog on his server that he operates. It is located at http://maximum.servehttp.com/

Robert also runs http://www.geekgear.co.nz/ which is an online store specialising in geek clothing.

Robert is also heavily into recycling.

Useless Information: Castaways Travel, a Houston-area travel agency, offers an all-nude flight to Cancun Mexico. Once the plane reaches cruising altitude, you are allowed to take off all your clothes and roam about the cabin.

Quasars Storage

Today I downloaded and installed Quasars Storage. It is an application for my website allowing me to easily make downloads available to my visitors.

It is a PHP script which I finally managed to get installed after figuring out the correct Hostname to be used in the configuration.

It easily allows the creation of Main Categories and Sub Categories. The only problem I have seen so far is the fact that you must specify a sub category for each main category. I didn't really want to do this as I have not got a massive number of files to upload and make available. However, this is will provide additional room for expansion in the future.

I managed to ad my Google Adsense advertisements into the main code. I have noticed that people do occasionally download some of the files on my website. This will make it look a lot more professional, and slimline the upload process. I may ask Phillip if he is interested in uploading to my website file store at some stage.

I really wish I had more time to work on this, but Anisha and I are off to Greymouth and I will leave this project for when I have more time on my return. For now, it is a work in progress.

My only concern is, will the text be indexed by Google? I believe it will be.

Useless Information: Construction workers hard hats were first invented and used in the building of the Hoover Dam in 1933.

The Sunday before the Trip

Anisha and I went in to Manukau today to find an AA (Automobile Association) that was open. We picked up some maps of Wellington, Christchurch, and Greymouth. The AA on Cavendish drive is open until 4pm on a Sunday. Given that we didn't sleep in much this morning, we had ample time.

We caught a quick glimpse of Joseph Paki (One of my former managers in Microsoft Services), as we parked up. We briefly exchanged pleasantries from within our respective cars.

After that, I took Anisha to Moshims (Herein called 'The Indian Store') so she could collect some groceries (including enough rice to feed a small army) and other supplies.

On the way back we went to the Botany Downs Shopping Centre so Anisha could buy some clothes. I also got dad a card for Fathers Day.

I was almost run over on the pedestrian crossing between The Warehouse and Dick Smith Electronics by a retarded Asian lady driving at 100km* per hour in her blue people-mover. This really pissed me off. The lady just drove straight through the crossing while I was in the middle of it. I really wanted to give her a piece of my mind. Unfortunately, my arms were empty of items I could use as projectiles.

When we got home, we did some more finalising of our trip. I dropped Anisha off home as she had some housework and bag-packing to do.

I installed Morange on my cellphone as an experiment. Morange is a well-featured Email, Chat, RSS, and Social Networking tool, while the eBuddy that I also have installed is simply an Instant messaging client. I will stick with eBuddy as it allows me to log into Windows Live! via my cellphone easily.

I have found to distinct problems with eBuddy since trialing it:

- It runs as a full screen Java application on my cellphone. Being a Java application, it does not integrate into the main screen. This means that If I am going to use it, I need to leave it open and running full screen. This is in contrast to the Microsoft Instant Messaging client included in Windows Mobile, which allows the application to run in the background, utilising popup bubbles and the like.

- A slight screen drawing issue on start up, which resolves itself after a chat session is initiated. This occurred on my Nokia 6680 and I have also reproduced this on a Nokia 6630 as well. A noticeable section of the main Nokia screen is not drawn over correctly by the application on start up. I do not believe this is necessarily and application fault, but more an underlying problem with the implementation of the Symbian OS on this series of Nokia phones.

Additionally, I have been unable to connect the application on a Nokia 6225. I have also installed it on a Nokia 6234 where it also refuses to connect. I imagine these problems relate to configuration settings on the affected phones. Fortunately it is working fine on the one I wish to use it on! The Nokia 6225 is a work phone and it is quite possible there are some restrictions preventing the connection.

I also checked to see if there was a firmware update available for my Nokia. Unfortunately there was not.

* Estimated speed only

Useless Information: 27% of female lottery winners hid their winning ticket in their bras.

Bras and Things

This morning we went to the Bendon Factory in East Tamaki (18 Birmingham Road, East Tamaki) as there was a sale on at the time and Anisha wanted to take advantage of this. I then took Anisha to Dress Smart in Onehunga. I bought some thermal gloves for the trip to the South Island. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a pair of guys gloves at Dress Smart!

I bought us MacDonald's for lunch. I wasn't too hungry as I had eaten a Hot Dog from Wendy's. The source was very sloppy, and despite tasting good, I wouldn't recommend it. We bumped into Michael Hobbs formally of Datacom.

After shopping, we went to find an AA (Automobile Association) office so I could pick up some maps of the South Island. The one I have been to in the past on the corner of Kilkenny Drive and Chapel Road appeared to no longer be there. We went down to the AA in Meadowlands, but unfortunately it closed at 4pm which was when we arrived.

We went to Countdown to get some supplies for dinner.

We made home-made hamburgers at night, finishing off with some Mississippi mud cakes.

Useless Information: Levis Straus made working pants out of denim for people during the California gold rush. Levis Straus is now the world's largest maker of jeans.

Fish Fingers, Wedges, and Chips

Anisha came to stay tonight. We went to the supermarket and picked up some stuff for dinner. Just a quick meal tonight.

Aunty Carol asked for some help with resizing some images for some items she is planning to advertise on TradeMe. TradeMe has an image limit of 500k per photo. I threw the images into Irfanview and played around with compression to reduce the size taken. I emailed the photos back to her.

It looks like the NZ$50 that I spent on Microsoft Digital Image standard a few months back didn't provide me with any additional tools that I will actually use. Perhaps I should have purchased the full Microsoft Digital Image Suite.

Originally, I was prepared to pay for an application that would provide a one-click touch-up on photos. Unfortunately, Digital Image Suite provides a three step process to apply three different filters for colour, exposure etc. Oh well, at least there doesn't appear to be copy protection on it so I can share it with a few people.

Useless Information: Back in 1919, the Russian transplant pioneer Serge Voronoff made headlines by grafting monkey testicles onto human males.

Hell Dogs not as expected

I was planning to meet Anisha for lunch at the local cafe today. However, the weather went bad and I didn't relish the idea of going out in the rain.

We mutually agreed to skip lunch together today. As a fallback option, I decided to order a Pizza from Hell Pizza. I noticed that their delivery charges have increased. When I first ordered Hell Pizza delivered, it was only NZ$5.00 per delivery. Today I noticed it has increased to NZ$6.00. It was only a couple of weeks back that I had noticed an increase to NZ$5.50.

I went halves on the delivery with Blair, who ordered some Hell Dogs. It was his expectation that these Hell Dogs will be some type of American hot dog. This was far from the truth. What he received was six small sausages with some dipping sauce. The Hell Pizza website does not readily describe the food available. It was only after looking at the menu available in a PDF did we find a description.

I owe Blair NZ$10 as he gave me a twenty dollar note.

Useless Information: On average, Americans eat one hundred acres of pizza a day. This amounts to about three hundred fifty slices per second.

He should have been a salesman

When I arrived home from work today, I realised my petrol tank was virtually dead empty. I had to decide whether I was going to get up earlier in the morning to fill it up, or go fill it later that night. Being the non-morning person I am, I selected the later option.

I filled up at Shell in Botany Downs. The petrol pump was a pain. The little switch thing that keeps the gas pumping without you needing to stand there wasn't working properly. When I did manage to get it to work it didn't seem to be pumping out the petrol very fast. What a pain.

To add injury to insult, the attendant at Shell attempted to sell me one of those Dairy milk chocolate bar thingies. It is great for "dessert" he says. I bought 42.85L of Ultra 91 for NZ$65.78. This was NZ$1.545 per Litre. At least I earned some Fly Buys points on the petrol purchase. I passed on the chocolate bar.

On the way to the petrol station I detoured through the Botany Downs Town Centre, as I caught something on my Police Scanner before leaving. Just a few cops surrounding some dodgy looking guy. My photography is hopeless I'm afraid. I had heard a lot of bag snatches and burglaries on my scanner tonight.

I also set up weekly reports from Google Analytics to provide me with information on where my vistors are coming from, and why on earth they would actually read this blog.

Additional Information: To warn off other males, the orangutans of South-east Asia burp loudly to declare their territory.

Nokia Battery Recall

This morning on the way to work, while listening to the radio (ZM 91.0 mhz) I heard an announcement that Nokia are recalling some 46 million battery's due to a potential fault. I took minimal notice of this until an email went around work advising of the problem.

The battery was the same one which I use (BL-5C) in my Nokia 6680. There is a link on the Nokia site where you can enter your serial number, and it will inform you whether your battery is part of the recall or not. Mine was fortunately (or unfortunately??) not in need of a brand new replacement.

Original Product Advisory from Nokia

Product Advisory: Nokia BL-5C battery

Please select the language : English 日本語

Dear Nokia Customer,

This is a product advisory for the Nokia-branded BL-5C battery manufactured by Matsushita Battery Industrial Co. Ltd. of Japan between December 2005 and November 2006. This product advisory does not apply to any other Nokia battery.

Nokia has identified that in very rare cases the affected batteries could potentially experience over heating initiated by a short circuit while charging, causing the battery to dislodge. Nokia is working closely with relevant local authorities to investigate this situation.

Nokia has several suppliers for BL-5C batteries that have collectively produced more than 300 million BL-5C batteries. This advisory applies only to the 46 million batteries manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006. There have been approximately 100 incidents of over heating reported globally. No serious injuries or property damage have been reported.

Consumers with a BL-5C battery subject to this advisory should note that all of the approximately 100 incidents have occurred while charging the battery. According to Nokia's knowledge this issue does not affect any other use of the mobile device. Concerned consumers may want to monitor a mobile device while charging that contains a BL-5C battery subject to this product advisory.

While the occurence [sic] in the BL-5C batteries produced by Matsushita in the time-period specified is very rare, for consumers wishing to do so, Nokia and Matsushita offer to replace for free any BL-5C battery subject to this product advisory.

The BL-5C batteries which are subject to the product advisory were used with the following Nokia models or separately as accessories:

Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100c, Nokia 1101, Nokia 1108, Nokia 1110, Nokia 1112, Nokia 1255, Nokia 1315, Nokia 1600, Nokia 2112, Nokia 2118, Nokia 2255, Nokia 2272, Nokia 2275, Nokia 2300, Nokia 2300c, Nokia 2310, Nokia 2355, Nokia 2600, Nokia 2610, Nokia 2610b, Nokia 2626, Nokia 3100, Nokia 3105, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3125, Nokia 6030, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6086, Nokia 6108, Nokia 6175i, Nokia 6178i, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6230i, Nokia 6270, Nokia 6600, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6631, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 6820, Nokia 6822, Nokia 7610, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia N72, Nokia N91, Nokia E50, Nokia E60

“Nokia” and “BL-5C” are printed on the front of the battery. On the back of the battery, the Nokia mark appears at the top, and the battery identification number (consisting of 26 characters) is found at the bottom. If the battery identification number does not contain 26 characters, it is not subject to this product advisory.

< --- SNIP --- >

Source: http://www.nokia.com/batteryreplacement/en/

Response after running my battery's serial number through their replacement website:

Product Advisory: Nokia BL-5C battery

Your battery is not among those manufactured by Matsushita between December 2005 and November 2006 and your battery will not be replaced.

www.nokia.com

Useless Information: Kermit the Frog was named after Kermit Scott, a childhood friend of Jim Henson's, who became a professor of philosophy at Purdue University.

Sanjays Anniversary

Today was Sanjays one year anniversary of working for Zeacom.

My personal Nokia 6680 is continuing to drive me nuts. Ongoing errors such as "memory full" when trying to unlock the phone today are seriously making me consider smashing it on the nearest hard surface. Prior to the Nokia 6680 (my first Nokia smartphone), I had nothing but praise for the brand. Now my comments seem to echo the hundreds of thousands of comments from others all over the Internet.

After work, I had dinner with Anisha at her apartment and then watched Target and NCIS. Anisha served up some ice cream for desert. Anisha doesn't normally have dessert.

Useless Information: Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.

TelstraClear third player in mobile market

After years of false starts and empty promises that it will enter the mobile network business in New Zealand, it looks like TelstraClear is actually going to do it this time. TelstraClear has cemented an agreement with Telecom to make use of its network while it builds its own. This will enable TelstraClear to be the third mobile network in New Zealand. TelstraClear will launch its mobile service later this year.

The deal allows TelstraClear to sell branded handsets, with bundles and pricing plans that are different to Telecom's. The agreement allows TelstraClear to make use of Telecoms CDMA phone network. TelstraClear previously has a mobile agency agreement with Vodafone, although it was far more restrictive. That agreement expired on 30th June this year.

A Telstra spokewoman said that under the Vodafone agreement, TelstraClear has little ability to differentiate. Vodafone has made several attempts to sign a new deal with TelstaClear, however this has ultimately failed.

TelstraClear is currently New Zealands second largest provider of fixed line phone and Internet services. The agreement will allow TelstraClear to offer a single bill for all voice, data, and mobile services.

Source: New Zealand Herald, TelstraClear, Stuff

Useless Information: Daytime dramas are called soap operas because they were originally used to advertise soap powder. In America in the early days of TV, advertisers would write stories around the use of their soap powder.

Sunday has come so fast!

It rained like hell this morning. Thunder and lightning, and hail colliding with the house windows. Anisha and I completed some of the more specific minor details for our trip to the South Island. We organised a few things for the car rental.

Looking at Google, my Blog has now returned to position number two for a search on "Hayden Tennent". Call me a geek, but my site should come up before others that index it.

I had a play with Google Maps. It looks like you can easily put notations on a map, and share it with others. Unfortunately, for full integration with my website/Blog more effort is required through a Google API.

We went down to the Mad Butcher on Chapel road and picked up some Chicken Schnitzel for dinner.

After dinner, I had a quick catchup over Windows Live! Messenger with Tony Namulo. He is currently working for Microsoft UK.

Useless Information: Acting was once considered evil, and actors in the first English play to be performed in America were arrested.

Out to the Movies at Home

On Friday, Anisha and I rented out the movie Hot Fuzz from Blockbuster. It was a comedy, of which the humour did not agree with Anisha. We planned to hire out a Playstation 3 and a movie along with some games, however it appeared that Blockbuster at The Hub does not rent them at all. I was quite disappointed.

Anisha ordered Pizza Hutt and I ordered Wendys. It was takeaway night after-all. I was surprised that Anisha's pizza only took 15 minutes from order to being ready.

Today, we went for a walk to the Botany Downs Town Centre. Anisha got a haircut and did some shopping. I had a look at Harvey Norman and Dick Smith Electronics. Harvey Norman was offering a SanDisk Cruzer® Micro USB Flash Drive for NZ$60. When pressured, the salesman would only knock NZ$5 off the price. We then walked home through the park, observing this funny looking cat as seen in the included photo.

We went to INC technologies so I could pick up a new USB Flash Drive. I picked up a 2 Gigabyte SanDisk Cruzer® Titanium USB Flash Drive for NZ$50. This was far better value that what was on offer at Harvey Norman. I also picked up a Microsoft Wireless mouse, just like the one I have at work! It was listed at NZ$65, but was sold to me at NZ$55.

We came home and Anisha helped me with some much needed cleaning. Thanks Anisha, you're a star! We played CSI: Dark Motives again tonight. Unfortunately, from case number two the text was all in French! after looking up a support article on the Ubisoft website, we found that this in fact was a bug, and there was a fix posted. We downloaded the fix and the problem was resolved. Quite a disgrace to release a commercial product in such a fashion I say.

I went and returned the DVD we had rented, and bought Anisha a Cornetto.



Useless Information: All of the officers in the Confederate Army were given copies of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo to carry with them at all times. Robert E. Lee, among others, believed that the book symbolized their cause. Both revolts were defeated.

The Beginnings of Local Loop Unbundling

On Thursday, Telecom opened up access to its Ponsonby and Glenfield exchanges, as part of its directive in order to allow its competitors access to the copper phone network (i.e the last mile). This is part of a trial in local loop unbundling.

The first ISP's to take advantage of this are Orcon and Ihug. These ISP's have installed their phone and broadband equipment in the two Telecom exchanges as part of a commercial trial. This is the first time that Telecom has opened their exchange to ISP's and wholesale competitors. The trial is due to be expanded to five exchanges.

Telecom has pre-empted the Commerce Commission's rulings and regulation of LLU which is to come into effect later this year. However, Telecom will only be required to unbundle at the rate of 15 exchanges per quarter. Internet Service Providers are calling for this to be doubled or even tripled.

Orcon states it will offer up to 100 Mbit/s Internet, and that it will deploy equipment in every open and available exchange. CallPlus is also anticipating to perform tests in two exchanges, with a full commercial service by the end of the year.

Source: New Zealand Herald

Useless Information: All office seekers in the Roman empire were obliged to wear a certain white toga for a period of one year before the election.

Lone Star to the rescue!

Jonathon Side is going to the United States on Tuesday. He is planning to stay there for three months and then return back to New Zealand. He is going to meet up with friends, and in particular a girl named Alycia who he has "met" on the Internet about 8 years ago.

Geraldine sent an email around this morning to roughly organise the dinner out tonight. She suggested Gengy's Restaurant in Newmarket. Geraldine sent me a link to some reviews of the restaurant, and details of its location. A lot of the reviews were less then favourable. Interested in this, I went to the Auckland City Council and checked its food hygiene status. That restaurant had a "D" grade, which is the second lowest you can get.

We met up outside this restaurant, and I convinced the group to go to a different restaurant. Ricky suggested The Lone Star Bar & Cafe, and we finally went there. Also, Jonathon mentioned that he preferred western food anyway.

Once inside, we did need to wait for a bit to get a table (there were seven of us). Once we had ordered, we also waited a long time for our food to arrive. However, I say it was definitely worth it.

I ordered a "Dixie Chicken" (Two tender breasts of chicken poached in a creamy sauce of wine, garlic, carrot, spring onions, herbs & corn. Served with Lone Star coleslaw salad & buffalo chips). This was fantastic! This was the best chicken I have ever had! For dessert, I had a "Cold Comfort" which was a Kapiti Ice Cream and strawberry pleasure. I thoroughly recommend the Lone Star Bar and Cafe.

After a subsequent investigation on the Auckland City Council website, Lone Star has a food grading of "A", with the last inspection date being 10/07/2007. Lone star is located at 8 Kent Street, Newmarket.

Earlier on today, Anisha and I went to the FM Cafe for lunch. Sue Farley from Datacom was on the table just over by herself.

Useless Information: Ancient Sybarites taught their horses to dance to music to make their parades more glamorous.

On Target for the Television

On my walk down to the local sandwich house to pick up my lunch, I saw a film crew and a presenter (Brooke Howard-Smith) from TV3's Target TV programme.

I was in a generous mood and so filled-up the jelly bean jar at work, which had been empty for some time. I received nothing but praise from Blair upon filling it up.

Anisha sent me a link to this cool Superman photography game. My first attempt resulted in a score of only 35. As you can see by the screenshot I have improved a bit!

Ritesh Lal from Datacom was also at Zeacom today getting some training. Unfortunately, one of the Installers Gabrielle Johnson was only able to let me know after he had left, otherwise I would have had a quick catchup with him. I did give him a call on his cellphone and we had a quick chinwag.

Later on at night, I submitted this Blog to the Open Directory Project.

Useless Information: Any Russian man who wore a beard was required to pay a special tax during the time of Peter the Great.

The Skinny on the Pulse

I signed-up with the new Plaxo with Pulse service and was immediately disappointed. This aggregation service (which is all it is) failed to correctly import/sync my Windows Live! contact list. Also, in accordance with their well advertised policy on strong privacy, a concerted effort is actually required to share anything with anyone.

Its still in beta, but it is connected to my Blogger Blogs, Myspace, and YouTube site. Unfortunately, Bebo is not on there, but I'm not really too bothered. It looks like the free version is ad-supported by Google adverts. Will let you know how it goes!

Also tonight, I created a new list of links to all my online profiles. I now have Myspace, Bebo, LinkedIn, and Facebook listed.

Useless Information: At one point, the Panama Canal was going to be built in Nicaragua.

Chickenpox for the Tegel Man

I woke up this morning. I drove to work, like I do every day. Welcome to Tuesday. I worked through my existing workload, while dealing to the new support cases arriving in a steady stream.

Our primary contact for Tegel Food has been off sick. He has been sick with chickenpox. I couldn't contain my laughter as I bellowed into the phone. LOL. I must commend him for still taking phone calls while being ill.

Driving home was it's usual chore. Other than the Police Car bobbing and weaving in an out of traffic like crazy, and the Chinese people crossing Highbrook Drive looking like they wanted to meet their maker, it was uneventful.

In other news, Sir Angus Tait, the New Zealand electronic pioneer and founder of Tait electronics, has died at the age of 88. Sir Angus founded Tait Electronic in 1969, with a second mortgage on his house, after a previous business went broke in 1967.

Since then it has grown to employ 750 people with revenues of around $170 million. He was a critic of the free market "Rogernomics" policies of the 1990s.

Useless Information: At the turn of the last millennium, Dublin has the largest slave market in the world, run by the Vikings.

Its all about the Plaxo With Pulse!

Today I did some reading about a new service on the net called Plaxo. Forget the decentralized mess which YouTube, MySpace, Bebo and all force upon you. Merge them with Plaxo, and its new service called Pulse!

It's described as "The easiest way to stay connected is now also the easiest way to share just about anything. Pulse now brings you "people feeds" from all over the web"

The idea behind this service is that it is supposed to surpass all the existing services with its openness and its ability to aggregate multiple services into one. I have seen this tried in part before, although those sites generally amounted to a page which holds links to other content on the web.

And its all free! With a lot of these social networking sites, if you want to share content, your viewers must sign-up to the site as a user. The big draw card of Pulse is that you can make all this information publicly available.

From their website: "People you know are creating great online content everyday: photos, blogs, wishlists, playlists, profiles, and more, all over the web. Until now, this stuff has been difficult to discover — and even harder to stay on top of. That's why we made Pulse."

Generally, I tend to not trust online services which aggregate accounts with the only one I have ever trusted being the Trillian Instant Messaging program. This became moot when it appears that everyone on the entire Internet these days is now using Windows Live! Messenger.

Regarding all my online contacts, the only 'hanger-on' to formally popular IM clients is Braden Murdoch. When I was last in contact with him, he was still using ICQ.

Useless Information: Aztec Emperor Montezuma has a nephew, Cuitlahac, whose name meant 'plenty of excrement'.

An Auto Attendant gone bad

A few months back, one of our customers had complained that our software had been incorrectly disconnecting users in one of the Auto Attendants we had provided. Hanging-up in 95% of situations is a function of the PABX switch and we mealy interact with the switch to control call flow.

I was tasked with testing the system in an attempt to reproduce the fault. To facilitate this, I created a rather creative Auto Attendant, of which the customer had a DDI terminated on. I went through this Auto Attendant about a couple of hundred times, attempting to catch an abnormal disconnection. I was not able to find one.

The Auto Attendant I created was, well, very creative. It began with "Welcome to the Anisha Fan Club". Press 1 to Order a Pizza, Press 2 to speak to Harpreet Singh etc etc.

Now the real kicker is that today, the customer managed to reprogram their system to replace their normal Auto Attendant with my test Auto Attendant. God knows how long it was active for. The customer did call us in the end, as they recognised my voice on the test recording. Never underestimate your customer!

I also added labels to a large number of my posts. Thanks to Phillip Jackson for the idea! I also noticed when doing a search for my name [Ego-Surfing] that my blog has dropped from position number two which is quite disappointing.

Useless Information: Before the 1800's there were no separately designed shoes for right and left feet.

A Family Dinner and a Birthday Celebration

Tonight, we had a traditional family dinner. We celebrated my dads birthday this evening. We had the usual birthday cake (Banana Cake this evening, my favourite!), and we gave some gifts.

Mum bought him some books. One of which spoke of how the pharmaceutical industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, selling pills to people who are not sick. Mum read about the book in an article in the New Zealand Herald about cholesterol.

I went halves with Charlene and Nick on some new cuff links for dad. Apparently, the ones that he has at the moment are over 30 years old! I thought the birthday card I bought him was most humorous.

Officially, Carlos bought dad some scorched almonds. Dad was quite willing and able to offer them to the rest of the family, after we were quite full on dessert!


Video: Happy Birthday To You

Useless Information: In 1954 boxers and wrestlers had to swear under oath they were not communists before they could compete in the state of Indiana.

The Food Show

Today we went to the food show. We arrived at 10am to a large queue. However, the queue did move at a reasonable pace and we were quickly inside.

Below is Anisha's account of events today.

Hayden and I went to the food show at about 10am. Poor Hayden had to wake up early. I made sure that we were there early so we didn't need to experience to much people traffic and that decision of being there early paid off.

I have learnt a few new recipes which is great. and I am going to try them out on Hayden, maybe sometime next week. We watched exciting and educational food demonstration from world famous chef Charmaine Solomon [A feast for a Maharajah. -Ed], she made Butter Chicken, spiced rice Pilaf with Raita.

Well that's all from me for now you might see my special appearances again in the future. signing off Anisha.

In the evening, Anisha and I played CSI: Dark Motives again, and solved the first case. Later on, I installed the Kontera ad code into my blog.


Video: A Feast for a Maharajah (Charmaine Solomon)

Useless Information: Children in the Chinook Indian tribe were strapped between boards from head to toe so that they would have fashionably flat skulls.

The Cock and Bull

Today was Matt Hanrahans 10th anniversary of working at Zeacom. There was a brief gathering in the Lava Lounge in the evening, where Miles Valentine (CEO) presented him with a watch.

Alan, Lydia, Anisha and I met up at the Cock and Bull Botany Downs. We ordered some Cheesy Garlic bread and chips for starters, then we ordered our mains. Alan had Nachos, Anisha and Lydia ordered Thai Green Curry. I ordered fish in chips, which I must say was significantly nicer then at The Howick Club.

Useless Information: Close to 700,000 land mines were dug up from the banks of the Suez Canal after the 1973 war between Egypt and Israel.

A Pizza Shout from Wayne