What, February already! Once again, time is whizzing by. Stan (my brother) has been over with us in Melbourne for a month already, and is still waiting for the start of his university adventures. Having another person in the house isn’t too bad, especially if it’s someone you’ve known for the better part of twenty years. One more person to watch HIMYM/PS3/basketball/bitch with = good. And yes I have been taking pictures, but have gotten very lazy. (As always.) I have been particularly remiss in updating my Flickr/blog with recent pictures, and am still posting them on Facebook. So here you go, here’s a recent picture I took. On another note, work is absolutely looking to be full of migrations, migrations and more migrations. Old servers looking to get phased out, procurement of new hardware, OS installation and software configuration, and of course the most important bit – checking to make sure everything is good to go, before we execute the change. On top of that, I have a few Cisco 7200s waiting to be rolled out; with brand new NPE-G2s to boot. I love new hardware heh heh. The bad thing about the NPE-G2: it requires newer versions of the IOS, and yes that means it is not backward compatible with IOS versions, 12.3 and earlier IIRC. And about network migrations: it takes a lot of design work and planning. One wrong command, and things go bellyup very, very fast. This is a bad thing, especially when we are talking about many customers. And when it comes to the internet, a lot of customers have an expectation of 99.999999% uptime. Working through an outage while thousands of customers are screaming; not a pretty sight. So yes, at least four separate network migrations, and three server migrations for 2010. Planned ones, discounting potential outages. I’m looking forward to an increase in broadband sales this year, with the newly designed broadband plans. It feels great to be able to produce a competitive product, and to have customers sign up for it; that’s basically a seal of approval on how good the plan is. And yep, that’s basically it for now. I’ll probably rant more on Google Buzz, since it’s way more convenient than posting on Twitter or Facebook. Follow me if you’re interested: keindall at gmail dot com. - wasted two hours of my night… - wasted two hours of my night checking for some fcukin’ mythical error on my network. Probably some stupid bug on customer’s Apache. NICE! RT @jeroxie Old Town Kopitiam … RT @jeroxie Old Town Kopitiam Mamak QV review: http://tinyurl.com/yd53vjz Post-2009 thoughts Now, 2009 has come and gone. And 2010 is here! So, what have I done in 2009? Supported the Crazy John South Dragons, and watched them rise to their first ever NBL championship! And promptly vanish thereafter. There goes my hopes of watching live basketball matches at a nearby arena. Passed my IELTS with flying colours on the first try. Got threatened with a lawsuit; it was a very exciting weekend. Caught Mayday in Melbourne for the first time, yeah! Setup a basic home network with centralised storage and scheduled backup; one step ahead for easy access and redundancy! Bought my first DSLR: the Canon 50D with a fantastic lens, the EF 28mm F/1.8. Photography returns! Skipped out on a trip to Falls Creek, and enjoyed some exclusive me time. Realised me time is very important. Watched Jersey Boys. Twice. (Third time coming this year!) Bought my first automatic watch, the Lum-Tec M18. Yes, buying this is a major milestone. Random tech improvements at work involving Cisco, Linux and MRTG. Went for a two week getaway to Singapore. Christmas@Bali, New Year@Bangkok. My first real overseas vacation since 2007, wow. Goals for 2010: To gain more insight into what I want in life. To understand myself better. Life is a journey of self-discovery, yes? To explore more places within Australia. To improve sales via online marketing (SEO, PPC) at work To roll out several more migrations successfully with no hiccups. Fingers crossed! - Rondo with triple double, Sh… - Rondo with triple double, Sheed with 29. C’s with 5 guys in double figures to win Raptors! Movies: 风云 2 (Storm Warriors) So yes, despite all the negative feedback I caught this last night at Crown. Andddd here we go, the beginning of a stream of criticism: 步惊云’s 三霸剑之剑流云: 5 star effort, excellent! His other moves were crap. 步惊云’s 悲痛莫名 looked like a huge ball of water, rather than the sea of slashes that represented the sorrow of the swordsman’s emotions. 无名’s 悲痛莫名 was learnt by 步惊云 at a very young age; what the hell was that about learning it instantly in the movie? Why is 无名 wearing armor? 万剑归宗 felt like a stupid hail of swords z; declasse. 聂风入魔 = Twilight-mode eyes? No blood red devil mode x-ray vision eye? And more importantly: why did he have both eyes in this movie, he was supposed to have only ONE! There was an attempt to follow the canon plot, which told of 聂风 turning into the 麒麟魔, as evidenced by the scales on his body. Not very well explained though, and I doubt the average audience would have realised it. 聂风的风神腿在哪了! He was using fists almost 90% of the time, sigh. Given that fight choreography with kicks on a non-martial artist is extremely tough, but I was sort of looking forward to this bit. 聂风 was so good, he could wield his 雪饮刀 with his feet, as illustrated in the comic with the move 踏雪寻梅. In the movie, we have him brawling like a street fighter. 第一邪王 is no longer the 阴阳 dude who is a half black/white fellow with a male and female arm. 第一邪王 magically knows 绝无神’s weak spot, wow. Magic! 第二梦 has a barely visible deformity on her face, and turns into a pretty chick. Come ON. 第三猪王’s 创刀 is never mentioned in this movie, and neither is his teaching to 聂风. Instead, he becomes this dude who wields a staff. A STAFF wth. 楚楚 knows 武功! Amazing. 绝无神 takes time off the gym, and slims down in this movie. No longer the hulking conqueror. Anyway, it is tough work adapting a comic to the big screen and I never had any expectations of this being an awesome piece of work, so it’s a watch-and-forget kind of thing for me. - thinks the Celtics really sc… - thinks the Celtics really scraped through the match against the Wizards; what a bloody close game! PS3: How to get your bang for the buck on games I formulated my ultimate long-term strategy on saving money for PS3 games over here in Melbourne. Step 1: Buying the game in Australia? Always remember: price match! Get the best deal you can from Big W, JB Hi-Fi, K-Mart or whatever it is, then price match at EBGames. Save money on the initial purchase. Step 2: [...] Tech: Google Pinyin as a Chinese IME Google Pinyin (or 谷歌拼音) is great stuff, kudos to Steven for introducing it. Easy to install Small memory footprint Non-intrusive on the OS interface, only appears when you switch your Windows IME to Chinese. Pretty good predictive function, even if your Hanyu Pinyin is not brilliant. And the interface is way better than the NJStar I used to use. [...] finally completed Assassin’s C… finally completed Assassin’s Creed 2! 95% because the 100 feather thing wasn’t completed – couldn’t be fcuked really. Tech: dhcpd tips, and how you should get it to work on a totally separate network For the poor sods who had problems with dhcpd – my DHCP troubleshooting notes. Done on a Fedora box, version 10 IIRC. Restart network interfaces: service network restart to use tcpdump for packet capture on the server: tcpdump -i -n port 67 or port 68 run dhcpd in debug mode in foreground: /usr/sbin/dhcpd eth1 -d -f stop service: /etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd stop run dhcpd on [...] I rated a YouTube video (5 out… I rated a YouTube video (5 out of 5 stars) — cry for me-JERSEY BOYS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pltRXokbphw&feature=autoshare_twitter I favorited a YouTube video –… I favorited a YouTube video — cry for me-JERSEY BOYS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pltRXokbphw&feature=autoshare_twitter - Week 2, Day 1. Final set, on… - Week 2, Day 1. Final set, only 17 pushups and promptly fell flat while attempting the 18th. - at week 1 day 3 of the hundr… - at week 1 day 3 of the hundredpushups.com routine, half-dead pfft. 5 more weeks to go! - Caught Jersey Boys for the s… - Caught Jersey Boys for the second time today; still a great experience! And belatedly realised South Dragons keychain is missing wth. - The free Bravia PS3 has arri… - The free Bravia PS3 has arrived! Hopefully it’ll be gone via eBay soon, have a look at the auction: http://tinyurl.com/ykk7rnz - Anyone in Melbourne interest… - Anyone in Melbourne interested in buying a 120GB PS3 slim for $400? Let me know! - first time I’ve sweated so d… - first time I’ve sweated so damn hard for bball on a Melbourne afternoon! SICK weather arrrgghh. - Stock coming in on Wed; Sony… - Stock coming in on Wed; Sony KDL40W5500 + PS3 here I come! Travel - Melbourne: Jetbus, wow #2. If you’re wondering where this post went to, it was removed for confidential reasons. Melbourne: Mayday D.N.A. ‘09 World Tour! Mayday is coming to Melbourne in May! (How appropriate.) And yes, I have got tickets to their D.N.A ‘09 World Tour heh heh heh. VIP seats at $169 each, but I bet it’s gonna be worth it! *50% off the concert ticket if you book a return flight with Select Travel, one of the major [...] Travel - Melbourne: Jetbus, wow. If you’re wondering where this post went to, it was removed for confidential reasons. NBL: Postgame analysis on Finals Game 4 - 11 Mar 09 Melbourne Tigers vs Crazy John South Dragons It was my first time catching an away game for the Dragons, and to make it even more memorable - I was going to be watching Game 4 of the NBL finals on the home court of the Melbourne Tigers. The State Netball Hockey Centre, where the Dragons lost 88-83 to the Tigers in Game [...] Australia - Tips on acing the IELTS When it comes to applying for Australian residency, IELTS could be one nightmare that just never ends. For others who are fairly competent, it is just one out of a gazillion irritating details to take care of. I took my IELTS (General Training) in February this year at Hawthorn-Melbourne, and cleared it with relative ease. Residency [...] NBL: Postgame analysis on Finals Game 3 - 08 Mar 09 Melbourne Tigers vs Crazy John South Dragons It was a lousy Friday evening as I tracked the live stats on NBL’s website, and watched Game 2 close to a 83-88 score. My hopes of a 3-0 run in this season’s finals poofed right then. I was still looking forward to Game 3 though, since the Dragons always played to their best on [...] NBL: Postgame analysis on Finals Game 1 - 05 Mar 09 Melbourne Tigers vs Crazy John South Dragons It’s the first time I caught an NBL game on a weekday, and dragging myself to Hisense Arena after work was no joke. Add the bloody gloomy weather to the equation, and it certainly took my mood down a notch or two. All of that vanished upon entering the stadium, because I could feel the [...] Sony PS3: The Force Unleashed - Clearing the damn Star Destroyer stage For the uninitiated: The Force Unleashed is Lucasarts’ latest offering in the line of Star Wars games. (via gamediva) One thing about the game, it makes you feel like tossing people off bridges is fun. And pumping individuals full of Sith lightning is acceptable. Damn, but it’s addictive. The one gripe I had about [...] NBL: Postgame analysis on Semisfinals - 28 Feb 09 Townsville Crocodile vs Crazy John South Dragons The crowd for today’s match at HiSense Arena was small, to say the least. One of the contributing factors might be the Foxtel Sports coverage - instant replays, better camera work: nice! I had seating in the premium section, which made for a much better view of the game. Needless to say, the Dragons delivered [...] Getting hitched, double-time? Curious social phenomenon: female friends who have not been together with their respective partners for more than 1.5 years getting hitched. Granted time is not a measure on quality of relationship, and that this trend might be constricted to people around me. Nevertheless, fascinating observation on how coming to 30 years of age might be [...]