An Agent and a Lone Star

Anisha's brand new Seagate FreeAgent hard drive had gone kaput. She had a lot of photos on it, and they were in jeopardy. From various methods and sources, we managed to restore about 80% of them, but the drive was dead.

We took the drive into Harvey Norman Botany Downs and explained the situation to their customer service. The guy we dealt with plugged the unit into three separate computers and it detected the drives without a problem. This was the initial behaviour we experienced on our PC's at home. I asked the gentleman to attempt to copy some files off the drive for five minutes. The drive failed and was no longer recognised after performing this test.

The Harvey Norman representative recommended having the drive with a Western Digital unit. He stated that he already had another dead Seagte drive in for repair, and that he uses Western Digital himself. Harvey Norman have the WD Mybook at the moment, which is a good unit as a replacement. Harvey Norman are going to attempt to recover the data, but their team on site hardly has the capability of a full data recovery.

Anyhow, Harvey Norman will try and recover the data and give us a call to see how it goes. It has not been successful. We may or may not have them approach Seagate to perform a data recovery on the drive. I'm personally feeling that the units firmware or connectivity has died somewhere and that the data could be recovered if the drive was removed from its casing. I'd be pretty sure that the unit would contain a standard hard drive.

I went to Just Cuts to get a style cut. Just Cuts are running a promotion where if you refer someone to Just Cuts, you can get free movie tickets.

We went to The Warehouse and Anisha had the idea that we could buy Carlos a little gift. After much discussion, we decided on getting some little bath toys which squirted water. We were ambushed by Eric Hart who was on duty, and I spoke with him for about 15 minutes. After talking with mum, she let us know that Carlos already has these bath toys. We returned the bath toys to The Warehouse and went to Kmart and picked up a toy box (Anisha's idea) instead. We then dropped it off to Carlos.

Later that night Anisha and I went to the Lone Star Bar & Cafe in Manukau. We had been to the one in Newmarket and were quite happy with the food. For my main I had Cajun Chicken, while Anisha had Dixie Chicken. We borrowed the family Entertainment Guide, which included a discount for a free main when another main is purchased. After a few drinks, and a Lone Star bread, this bought the total down to NZ$46. A very reasonable sum for a night out. We also saw Joe who used to work at CTRL-ALT-DELETE (Datacom Cafe) while dining. He is still working in Botany Downs.

Useless Information: In 1991, during an attempted political coup on Russian President Boris Yelstin, food supplies had dwindled down at the parliament buildings so they ordered Pizza Hut to deliver pizzas.

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.

Silvia Park Adventures

Today we went to the Silvia Park shopping centre. We picked out the wedding presents for Virginia.

We also went to Dick Smith Electronics Powerhouse in Silvia Park. We developed 133 Digital photos at 14 cents each. The prints were on special. When we got home, we put them in the album that we got from Kmart.

Anisha and I played Monopoly. For dinner we got takeaways from Punjabi Dhaba.

Useless Information: In 1937, yeast sales reached $20 million a year in the US.