My Blog

Tag: Events

  • IceTV and the Skippa pre-order disaster

    I pre-ordered my Skippa back on 2nd June, like many others. Looked like a fantastic unit, based on initial suggestions. Hence I put up the money to be an earlier adopter.

    IceTV wasn’t overly forth coming with an exact delivery, however we would get updates every so often.

    Below is a timeline of updates that progressed along from the initial purchase along with some of the marketing emails they sent that includes specials for the units.

    If you click the dates, you’ll get an image or pdf of the email in question.

    • Apr 3rd – Skippa Announced.
    • May 22nd – IceTV sends email “We’re bouncing with excitement!”
    • May 28th – IceTV sends email “Good bye ads, good bye subscriptions – hello SKIPPA”
    • Jun 2nd – Ordered unit
    • Jun 4th – IceTV sends email “No ads, big savings, act now”
    • Jun 5th – IceTV sends email “No ads, big savings, act now”
    • Jun 12th – IceTV sends email “Last 100 Left”.
    • Jun 19th – IceTV sends email “Skippa Update”
    • Jul 2nd – IceTV sends email “Now you can choose” – Pricing changes to shift more units?
    • Jul 16th – IceTV sends email “By popular demand, but not for long”
    • Jul 24th – IceTV sends email “Missed the boat?”
    • Jul 25th – IceTV sends email “Missed the boat?”
    • Jul 31st – IceTV sends email “Two new horses in the stable” – Delays
    • Aug 18th – I change my delivery address as the unit is likely to come while on holidays.
    • Aug 21st – IceTV sends email “First Skippa review published”
    • Aug 28th – IceTV sends email “Your SKIPPA Pre-Order”
    • Sep 11th – IceTV sends email “SKIPPA Shipping” – Note Heinz (CEO) clearly says Mass production of SKIPPA remains on schedule.. guessing this was a fib.
    • Sep 14th – Support ticket raised to ask where is my Skippa. Response from Leon (Customer Support) – Could be upto a week and a half before your skippa is posted.
    • Sep 25th – IceTV sends email “First steps with SKIPPA” – Be nice if they just delivered what we paid for.
    • Sep 30th – Support ticket raised to request update on my Skippa. Dave (Customer Support) responds “Sorry for the delays. Your Skippa will be posted tomorrow or Friday… etc”
    • Oct 2nd – IceTV sends email “SKIPPA Update” – Heinz (CEO) still not indicating any lack of stock to supply demand. But still no unit shipped.
    • Oct 6th – No email from IceTV or anyone indicating unit I ordered shipped. Was very annoyed. Voicemail left and email sent off my last query of where is my unit.
    • Oct 7th – No return call from IceTV regarding the voicemail left yesterday. Only an email again, this time detailing that they won’t be delivering unit at this time. However, look what is published on IceTV when you try to order one. Seems they telling public they are out of stock of SKIPPA. Oh really.

    You can’t seriously tell me that this all unfolded just this week (i.e. Oct 6th first day of work post public holiday Monday). I find that impossible to understand myself.

  • A tribute to Buddy and Bindi

    I thought it might be great to share a few photos of Buddy and Bindi over the years. Unfortunately we got Buddy a little before the age of digital cameras. Will dig through some of our old photos and find ones I can scan.

    Meanwhile, these photos all bring back many memories of them both. It only seems a short time ago, but looking at the date on these it’s certainly been a long time ago.

  • Farewell Buddy

    Today my wife and I had to say farewell to Buddy, who was the last of our two Labradors we’ve had long before getting married (and before having kids). Buddy was over 14 years old in human years. Those who have followed my blog for a while will remember that we said Farewell to Bindi back on May 11th 2013.

    Buddy was starting to get very old and was showing signs of his age unfortunately. We woke in the middle of the night to find he had got himself stuck on his bed and couldn’t get up. He had also showed signs that he was having trouble trying to stand and/or walk. However this was not always, just that he had some bad days where it was near impossible. We have also been waking up daily to find that he had gone to the loo where he laid.

    We decided some weeks back that perhaps it might be kind to let him go now rather then continue to suffer and get worse. Still doesn’t make such a decision easy, however I do hope that he passes to another life and possibly see’s Bindi again whom I know he missed dearly.

    We are going to truly miss him and I hope he knows how much we loved him.

    Buddy_08-08-2015_1118am
    Buddy – 8th August 2015

     

  • The last day of 2014

    I must admit, it’s hard to believe that today is the last day of 2014.

    This year seems to have gone fairly quickly. Not sure what 2015 will bring, but I guess we will soon find out as it rolls around.

    I am going to try and blog a little more during 2015, so you might see more posts from time to time.

    I previously got rid of my Facebook account, and after about 7 months used the service again. However, I recently as of early December removed my account again, this time I am trying really hard not to go back to use it. I am not really a fan of Facebook and it’s use by others to data mine things about you. Recent privacy changes from Facebook scheduled to happen from 2015, was a deciding factor for me to delete it prior to new year.

  • A week later and someone nearly runs me off road again?

    I was out driving again down the South Coast, this is the 2nd weekend in a row I had to go south, and I had the Dash Camera rolling again.

    Of course, you can imagine my surprise when the following happened below; (be sure to watch on youtube at 1080P).

    I cannot believe that it happened again. Drivers don’t seem to check blind spots and these actions are going to cause accidents and possibly death/injury to someone under the right conditions/situation.

    Yes I was pretty annoyed to have this occur to me again only a week later from the last time it happened.

    In addition, I also captured the following clip below of a car who ran a Red Light and nearly caused an accident. It’s fortunate that the cars in front of me were not hit by this encounter.

    Might need to start reporting these to the local police station and filling out any required paperwork. Today’s near miss could be tomorrow’s major accident for some of these people.

  • Carnival Spirit – 8 Day cruise

    Just got back today from a cruise on Carnival Spirit. We went for 8 days and it was good cruise. Had a good time, got to relax a bit and see a few ports I’ve seen before. Will be posting more pictures from the trip in the coming week, however below is a quick tease.

    Captured this one from Noumea, where the Spirit docked in the Freight Terminal, as it cannot fit into the Passenger Terminal.

     

    Freight Terminal - Noumea
    Freight Terminal – Noumea

    I’ve parsed the photo via a filter to give the picture a miniature look.

  • Linux installation on SSD

    I am going to be installing a Linux desktop onto an SSD drive soon, and I have started to research. If you have done this already and found something you needed to do that was not documented, please drop me a line.

    My aim is to setup my Intel i3 Mini-ITX system with a Linux Desktop install (Ubuntu probably) and eventually drop in some more storage, since the case and motherboard could handle 4 more SATA devices, not including the optical and SSD boot drive.

    Figured I could end up running for additional storage, services and desktop environment for doing other tasks like maybe get VMware Workstation going so I can run my existing virtual machines.

    The current duties it does that requires Windows will move onto a laptop I will purchase at the end of this month, or early next month.

  • Plumbing issue now resolved

    Today my step dad and I fixed a problem I discovered post the new pergola slab going in. Days after the area was cleared, I noticed a lot of water near the tap and thought my wife must of over watered the lawn.

    Post the slab being done it was more noticeable when pergola installer cut the downpipe. i.e no water came out of the live pipes. Since these should contain water since it goes to a tank. Thought the collar (reducer from 90mm to 100mm pipe) had come off, as it had once before.

    We cut out the pipe, and when we put a torch down the water was actually below the point of the collars, which meant the leak was lower.

    Dug out the side to access pipe and I immediately spotted the problem. It appears the 45 degree elbow that was under the concrete slab must of been knocked during excavation of the slab area I imagine and this split it on the inside of the elbow. It was so split that it was nearly around the whole pipe diameter. It had else caused some soil to erode around it too. Every time it rained, the system would need to load up, and post rain the system would unload all that water into the rear out this split. No wonder the ground was so wet post rain.

    Didn’t take and pictures of the split, as I was too covered in mud to get a camera. However did capture the picture below showing out fix, as you can see not a bad job. Loaded up the down pipes and no leaks. So win for us.

    Plumbing_Fix_8_Mar_2014

    Now I can get on to the next jobs around the house and yard. So much still to do. Will continue to take pictures. Have another low spot where I am going to lay a surface drain and some arg line/pipe to help stop the area from pooling with water (where the trampoline use to be)

     

  • Finally section of Garden Edging installed

    Today I finished off the last section of garden edging I have been installing. Below is a picture to mark the event.

    garden-edge-complete-04_mar_2014

    Now it’s completed I have a list of other tasks I now must commence in the backyard, so it all starts again on Saturday morning. The rain the past week has highlighted some problem areas which I need to resolve before winter comes around, cause I wouldn’t like to have a wet winter and still have water drainage problems.

    I’ve also managed to use the new Makita Cordless Jigsaw and completely love it. It’s just so good having a cordless jigsaw and no need to run leads for quick cuts.

  • A washed car always leads to rain

    Spent a good amount time lastnight washing the cars, and this usually results in the use of the car next day involving lots of rain. Sure enough my trip to Wyong today involved driving in lots of rain on the way up and back.

    Car is now dirty, guess I will be cleaning it again probably tomorrow, as it certainly needs it again now.

    The rain we drove through was very heavy and the visibility was reduced greatly during the trip.