Phillbo’s Blog Site

My plans on Saturday to work at the Catholic Church, and then to head down to Geelong were overshadowed by the fact that my car was still being fixed under warranty. By about 1pm, I finally had my car. The body alignment looks very flush and nice now, so finally I have all issues relating to my car resolved. Well almost. Jeff Wignall Ford have on sold my lock nuts on two previous occasions. It is apparent to me that they cannot be trusted. Next time I will pick them up on the day they arrive. But once I got my car back, I felt that sudden rush of freedom, that I haven’t had since Tuesday. That feeling reminded me back to the day I got my license.

Not all was lost. I pruned all the annoying trees on my driveway, and one of the trees I have pruned two thirds of it away. I am sure it will survive, but it looks a bit bare now. But hopefully I will finally get some peace and soon.

Today - Craig, Adrian, and myself did our OH&S Induction for a data centre in Melbourne City. This induction was targeted towards trade people, but everyone requiring access to the building had to attend, including us, the geeks.

After watching the 18 minute DVD on building safety issues, and then hearing the 20 minute lecture from the security staff, I am pleased to announce that we have now been awarded an induction certificate. So now I am on the train back to work, using the oncall laptop and the wireless card. I am pretty excited by the wireless internet concept, it has worked flawlessly from South Yarra to Seaford. So now it is time to sign off. We have to depart the train. I have no time to proof read either

The concept of getting a reminder SMS alert is good in principal, but in practice it isn’t always the case.

I bought a new Ford Focus at the start of this year. I had a warranty issue that needed fixing, and after arguing with the dealership and Ford Customer Care, they finally approved my warranty claim. The moral of this story is, never collect a car that isn’t perfect. The dealership are not qualified to keep their promises, but that is another story.

Three days ago: I got an SMS from my local Ford dealership confirming my appointment for my warranty car service. On the SMS message, the dealership confirmed the date (14/2/2008) - which is fine, except the SMS date was sent on March 8 at 9.22am. I should have called to confirm the time, but I assumed the month was wrong.

Today: I got a phone call from the Ford dealership and Ford Customer care, asking me to drop off my car as soon as possible.

The lesson to be learned is, if you see a mistake, don’t assume your own correction. Today I spent my lunch break dropping off my car. I am just thankful my mate Ian was able to help me.

It has been a long time since my last post, but this is mainly due to an ongoing outage with Telstra. Finally after four weeks, and the threat of a level 4 TIO complaint, I finally get my phone line (and ADSL) all working, and all this happened within 12 hours of making my complaint about the ongoing extended delays. As was revealed, Telstra had closed the fault without realizing that I still didn’t have my telephone service. So for now on, Telstra cannot be trusted.

I would love to throw away my telephone line altogether if I could have my ADSL, but that is not likely to happen just yet. Maybe in the perfect universe? Well enough ranting about Telstra

A lot has happened recently, and most of it quite positive. I have a housemate for the first time in a year and a half. His name is Robert, and he is an ultra polite guy from Indonesia. He is in the exclusive group of not legally having a surname. So Prince and Madonna can eat their hearts out, Robert didn’t even need to bastardize his name. But besides that, he is a grand chef, and he has cooked all kinds of dishes that have both been appealing to the mouth, and stomach, although one of his curries did make a burning quick exit. Most of you would say that is too much information, but hey I write how I see fit. Blah!

If you do wish to visit us, I am sure Robert would be willing to cook something grand given enough notice. I call him the cooking connoisseur, because he cooks like no other!

In the past two weeks, I’ve also had to learn to be more efficient with space, and re-arrange my bedroom to fit my queen size bed and 1.8m desk. My guitars still live in the lounge room, but they’re not taking up too much space. After having a whole place to yourself, you tend to leave stuff anywhere and everywhere. With my bedroom now re-arranged, I feel like a student again. Technically I am a student, as I have a few more books to read through with my Recreational Aviation and General Aviation. Studying two categories of pilot’s license is fine with me, but I now need to be serious about setting time for study. I would love to complete both forms of license endorsements this year. I have the flying hours; I just need to get my study up to date now. So now I must be disciplined, and finished what I have started.

I went to church with Robert tonight at the Cross Culture Church of Christ in Melbourne city. This place looks totally different in comparison to 12 years ago. I remember jamming there with a few other people from SFC back in 1995. It is now a full on auditorium, with a big stage. I was very surprised about the changes, as I haven’t seen such an overhaul of a place ever, but then again, Melbourne Central station (previously Museum station) looks totally different now too. It is amazing what has changed in the last three years since I stopped working in the Melbourne CBD. I have been totally oblivious to these changes. Which only proves this certainty, the world does not revolve around me!

I missed out on most of the Moomba festivity today, but I still enjoyed myself. The city was packed with people everywhere, and the atmosphere was pleasant too. There were people everywhere, however I think nothing will ever compare to the crowd of people that were at the Halloween party on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. I’ve never seen half a million people or been a part of such a large crowd, so to date, that is still the holder of the ”biggest crowd” trophy - well for me it is anyway.

As I haven’t included some pictures in a while, I went to the effort to post some from the 2007 Halloween Party. Due to my poor photography skills, and the strange lighting environment, I could never take a picture of the crowd that went on for miles and miles. Further than the eye could see, but I did include a few happy snaps of the Halloween party.

These are only a few random pictures, but I will post everything on Flickr soon. Anyway, back to my title, it is now 3am. I have had a late night. But because I am so old, I had to finish it off in the morning.

The images are big, so they will take a while to display. Next time I will consider generating thumbnails, but today isn’t the day. You can also download/view the image to see the full size picture if you wish.