Torment Parking

This weekend was really a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to adventures. On Friday night, Anisha and I went and saw the movie "Meet the Spartans" after work. I can only describe the movie as being 84 minutes of hilarious garbage. It's full of slapstick and completely unintelligent humour. You won't be expending too much brain power if you watch this movie.

My night was to get worse. I went to return to my car which was parked in my new secure parking to find that my access card wasn't working. I called the company up and a guy arrived in about 5 minutes. He was far from helpful, with a grasp of english which failed to communicate the problem correctly to his boss. These guys don't even have access cards to their own car parks!

He called in his boss (Tony) for assistance who didn't have access to the building either. During the debacle, another customer came into the building and lifted the door. I went and retrieved my bag and they had me move my car to another secure car park around the corner. Tony advised me that they won't be able to fix my access card until Monday. I pay for convenience, not these problems!

Over the weekend I also looked at the Acer Slimline Aspire L3600 PC, which I considered purchasing as a media centre PC. I also bought a DVD from Harvey Norman Botany with part of a gift voucher Charlene and Nick gave me previously. I couldn't believe the fact that Harvey Norman wants your contact name and phone number when you redeem a voucher. This is disgusting!

I also picked up Die Hard 4.0 from Dick Smith Electronics in Silvia Park. I ordered an additional 512mb RAM for my laptop from Ascent Technologies and Anisha ordered a Cooler Master Notepal just like mine. See here.

Anisha and I (Along with Kim and Nigel) planned to do the Cossey/Massey Loop (195 minutes / 5km) in the Hunua Ranges on Sunday, but I made an executive decision not to go as it was raining in the morning. The day actually turned out okay, so we really could have still gone, but thems the breaks.

Also, I can't forget to mention all the lovely dinners and breakfasts that Anisha made for me over the weekend. Isn't she lovely!

Additional Information: At the Festival of the Cleaver, the Spartans used to nail sausages to the wall for the older men to gnaw on... (Athenaeus 138e)

An Agent for MyBook

The people at Harvey Norman had no success recovering any of the photos off Anisha's faulty Seagate FreeAgent Desktop Hard Drive. Fortunately, Anisha was able to get more photos back through JR who pulled them from the Datacom network.

We went into Harvey Norman to get a replacement drive. Last weekend the the guy at Harvey Norman said we could have a Western Digital replacement, in comparison to the dodgy Seagate drive. The gentleman manning the customer service desk went and got the same Seagate drive until I protested and then we got a Western Digital MyBook instead. This is a slightly more expensive unit and the guy wanted to charge the difference. I had to protest again and they accepted this.

Harvey Norman were unwilling or unable to assist with data recovery on the old drive. They would not send it back to the manufacturer to attempt to recover the data. As a last ditch effort, I asked if I could have the drive so I could take it to a professional for data recovery. Excuse my slang, but this did not fly with them.

I now understand that Anisha has got most of her photos back, one way or another.

Useless Information: In 2001, the five most valuable brand names in order were Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE, and Nokia.