Meeting Anishas Aunty and Uncle

Today I met Anishas Uncle (Waka) and Aunty (Sumiti). We met for lunch in Mission Bay at the MECCA (85 Tamaki Drive, Mission Bay). Waka works for EDS, with his current project working with Telecom on their project to move from CDMA to GSM Technologies.

Sumiti works for the Todd Family.

On the website front, I had organised with my web host to have my sub domain of blog.nztechie.com to point to Googles ghs.google.com and activate the custom domain service that Google offered. This appeared to work, but it now appears to not be functioning. I have lodged a ticket with my host to have it fixed.

I understand that it could be a propagation issue, but I am quite confused as to how it immediately did work when set up. At this stage I have left the configuration in place on Blogger, which will make this Blog inaccessible until the problem is sorted. If you can read this, then the problem has been sorted! [Update: Shortly after writing this blog, I re-enabled the original website address of pickledhamster.blogspot.com]

Anisha went to the Ellerslie International Flower Show in Manurewa yesterday.

Useless Information: Colonel Sanders original white suit was auctioned off for $80,000 in February 2002.

Let the Celebrations begin!

After work today I went down to the Cardrona Speight's Ale House on Normanby Road, Mt Eden. Alan Mason was holding drinks there due to the fact that it was his birthday on Thursday. There were quite a lot of old faces there, Including Joseph and Amit from Datacom. Penny Cotton was also there. Nigel, Kim and Amy also met us at the bar.

Penny Cotton is currently working for Telecom in Network Operations. She had left working at TelstraClear onto the more flourishing pastures of Telecom.

Alan will be off to Armageddon on Saturday. Being the addicted Eve player he is, he is going to be on the Eve stand at Armageddon.

We discussed our plans with Nigel and Co for the Karangahake Gorge Walk tomorrow. We will be meeting up with other members of the ZeeClub in the morning on Sunday. If all goes to plan, it should be a nice and easy walk.

My RSA SecureID Token for Internet Banking arrived today. It is termed the "Internet Security Device" by my bank.

Useless Information: A single chocolate chip gives enough energy to a human being to walk 150 feet.

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.

Erroneously used IT terms

Below are terms that really get me annoyed when used incorrectly:

- People that call their computer the "Hard Drive". Its like calling a car a steering wheel!
- People that say they had to "Crash their computers" to recover their system.

I had lunch with Anisha at the FM Cafe. I took my umbrella with me even though it was not raining. I did not want a repeat of a previous soaking incident. She gave me [Suppressed] number two, there are 48 remaining to collect.

There was a fantastic rainbow outside the office today. But alas, I did not have my digital camera with me. My crys for anyone who had a digital camera went unanswered.

By the time I had pulled out my paltry 1.3 megapixel cellphone camera (Crappy unstable, bug-ridden, slow Nokia 6680), the rainbow was all but obscured by clouds. My quest for photographs was yet again hindered.

Ritesh Lal from Placemakers Helpdesk/Datacom told me by MSN today that he is coming to Zeacom on Wednesday for some training. It is Kim Putt's birthday on the 10th August. She will be 26. On another note, Charlene is in the current issue of Bride & Groom.

About a month back, I was looking for an additional advertising network to use on my blog. I found one that actually turned keywords on a site into hyperlinks, pointing to an advertisers website. Unfortunately, as hard as I tried tonight, I can not find that website. [Update 9:36pm - I found it! It is called Kontera]

I have put through an application to Kontera to sign up.

Useless Information: Francis Scott Key was a young lawyer who wrote the poem 'The Star Spangled Banner' after being inspired by watching the Americans fight off the British attack of Baltimore during the War of 1812, The poem became the words to the national anthem.