Rob's Rambling

Incredible Connection are idiots

Rob — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:59:23 +0000

The avid reader will notice a trend with most of my blog posts.

I choose an idiot and I blog about them. It's a simple formula and the subjects usually provide themselves pretty easily. I don't think anyone would argue that there's a dearth of idiocy around.

Today it's Incredible Connection.

I guess it's partially my own fault for using them in the first place but dammit, they were cheap.

I bought a laptop from them 8 months ago and it's been something of a problem child. I've already had to send it through for a hard drive replacement and now the bloody power supply has packed up.

I (being the naïve customer that I am) thought this would be a trivial thing to fix.

I'd bring my charger in, they'd verify it was broken and give me one of the many they have in stock.

The first two steps were right on the money but that's where it all goes wrong.

What actually happened after the charger was verified as broken is it was taken away and sometime on Monday or Tuesday it will be sent to Joburg.

Then in a few days another technician will look at my still broken charger, verify that it's still broken and send a request for a new one when he has a spare moment.

In 15 working days, I should have a charger.

Now, do Incredible Connection offer a spare from one of their many? No.

Do they have any sympathy for the fact that my laptop battery doesn't last 15 days? No.

Do they actually give a toss that instead of a laptop I have now got a very expensive paperweight? No.

The singularly unhelpful technician who shrugged when I asked what I should do with my laptop for 15 days really helped.

What a terrific way to piss off a customer.

Congratulations, R300 worth of charger has cost you any future business and any residual goodwill I may have had.

Idiots.

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Post tags: idiots, incredible connection, laptop, warranty

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Support is slippery… but my blood is still Green and Gold

Rob — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:21:10 +0000

As anyone who saw the South African fans leaving in droves this evening could tell you, support is the slipperiest substance known to humankind.

Tonight something fairly tragic happened - Bafana Bafana lost 3 - 0 to Uruguay and were shunted (almost) out of the first round of the Soccer World Cup. Now, whether you feel that some potentially dodgy calls by the ref were to blame or that Bafana truly did play a far sloppier game than Uruguay, the universal truth I'm sure is that it's depressing.

I watched with millions as Khune (a man we'd all come to know, respect and love) was given a red card and taken out of the game and I watched (and felt like crying) while Uruguay's phenomenal number 10 laid another goal on us, effectively sealing game.

More tragic than any of this though was as I also watched, with mounting disgust, the thousands of "soccer fans" flee from the site of their country's defeat before the game had even ended. As one of my friends on Twitter observed "probably gone to take their mirror flags off their cars".

That's bad form people, supremely bad form.

You're not a supporter because your team is winning... you're a supporter because they're your team.

Bafana will not go gently through the rest of this tournament... so why should you?

This is the same team that South Africa united behind against Mexico and dammit, this is the same team we should unite behind for all the rest of the games!

Bafana never stopped believing in you, Mzansi so why have you stopped believing in them?

Until the last whistle of the last game

Until the last Bafana player lies defeated in the mud

Until the last bit of spin leaves Jabulani lying still... I will support Bafana Bafana, I will support my country and my blood will be Green and Gold!

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Installing OpenQRM on Ubuntu 9.10

Rob — Thu, 27 May 2010 06:38:35 +0000

Seeing a virtual machine purring along is a thing of beauty. OpenQRM is a fantastic web based package for managing your system, private cloud and virtualization technologies. It integrates seamlessly with both KVM and XEN.

So, here's a brief HOW TO for installing OpenQRM on Ubuntu Server 9.10. This HOW TO assumes you've already installed the virtualization platform of your choice, either XEN or KVM.

Step 1: Installing Prerequisites

Boy there are quite a few of these for OpenQRM so let's take care of that first:

apt-get install php5-mysql libphp-adodb mysql-server mysql-client syslinux tftpd-hpa dhcp3-server nagios-images nagios-plugins nmap libxml-simple-perl open-iscsi aoetools expect puppetmaster subversion bind9

This will install everything you need to run OpenQRM. Nifty no? You may not end up using all these packages but OpenQRM requires them to at least be present before it'll install properly.

One note, and it's an important one - OpenQRM by default expects a blank root password for Mysql so don't set one or if you already have a root password, change it for the moment to blank.

Step 2: Getting the package

Head over to www.openqrm.com and grab the latest package. It's available in both Source and .deb format but I've chosen the deb as it's much simpler to get going. It's about 64mb in size so not exactly terribly huge.

As of writing, the latest version was 4.6.

Step 3: Installing!

Installation at this point couldn't be simpler:

dpkg -i openqrm_4.6-ubuntu1_amd64.deb

In my case, this did just fine.

The installation will ask you for details of your self-signed certificate. Fill these in but keep this step in mind because there are sometimes issues that will cause you to get stuck on Step 3 of the setup wizard. If this happens, you'll need to kill off OpenQRM by going:

apt-get remove openqrm

and re-running your dpkg -i command to start it up again. This time, don't enter any values for your certificate.

Step 4: Configuring

Head on over to https://[your-ip]/openqrm and login using:

Username: openqrm

Password: openqrm

Configure the cloud, virtualization and so on to taste.

Troubleshooting

Q) Help! My wizard gets stuck on step 3! The mysql database is created but nothing happens after that! What do?

A) You must kill off OpenQRM again and this time, don't enter any details in the certificate creation step. Please don't forget to go into MySQL and run a "drop database openqrm;" before reinstalling. Follow the instructions in Step 3 and you'll be fine.

Q) Help, something else is broken! How can I see what's going on?

A) OpenQRM uses /var/log/messages to store records of pretty much everything so use that as your first point of reference. If you can't get things sorted there, ask on the SourceForge site.

Conclusion

That's it - all done. I hope you enjoy using OpenQRM as much as I am

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The End of Lost (spoilers)

rob — Mon, 24 May 2010 21:27:54 +0000

At the moment I'm a little torn. I'm not sure whether to feel upset or happy but I'm guessing it'll settle on a mixture of both.

On one hand, I don't feel as screwed over as the Wachowski Wangs made me feel. But on the other, I'm left with a sort of empty feeling.

Was this really the best way they could think of to end Lost? I mean yes, technically Lost (and the events on the island) were not purgatory but cutting it that fine and making the flash sideways purgatory is a little much don't you think?

Purgatory was discussed (and dismissed if I recall) quite some time ago so it's not like the guys didn't have enough time to think up an alternate ending or two.

Eh, my brain is all over the place here so here's a quick and easy summary. I'll need to watch this again before I have a final judgement.

The Good

Oh, how fuzzy did I feel to see them all sitting in the church together? It was heartening. And seeing Sun and Jin get their memories back must have been one of my favourite moments on TV.

Kate shot the smoke. Hell yeah.

Seeing Bernard and Rose again? Priceless. I totally forgot about them!

The gut-wrenching feeling when LockeSmokey threathened Rose and Bernard. Every time he pulls that knife man... every time!

The Bad

Essentially, nothing is really resolved besides the most recent of questions. Yes, there are answers to questions that can be inferred but just once it would be nice to have something given to you by the people over at Lost.

It was purgatory all along. (You damn dirty apes!)

Shitbrick. 6 years? I feel a little robbed. Two, maybe three seasons and I'd be happy but 6?

The Ugly

Locke's feet. I mean really. I know it's not nice to mock the crippled but they were nasty.

The lovey-dovey feeling of everything. Ick. I'm a sucker for a good bit of love but I don't think it should be used as a kind of modern day Deus ex machina. It pissed me off in Harry Potter and it pissed me off tonight.

Vincent. Fucking Vincent didn't get to go to heaven? Damn that sucks. If there was ever a definition of a good dog...

That's not nearly all but it's all I have time to think about now. I need to go through the last episode and rewatch as well as the (probably excellent) Lost Journey video.

Thanks for the ride Lost, it was super. Regardless of how you ended, I think this is definitely one for the record books.

Still firmly a Lost fan,

Rob

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Dear ignorant racists

rob — Fri, 21 May 2010 23:12:29 +0000

Hi,

You don't know me and I don't know you. Now, I know that doesn't stop you from assuming that I'm just as ignorant and racist as you are but please don't.

If you should see me in the street handing a South African flag to a child or putting flags on my car's mirrors - feel free to keep on driving rather than taking time out of your busy schedule of burning crosses and badmouting entire races to tell me that MY COUNTRY'S flag is ugly.

Also, when you're talking about "those blacks" as you so endearingly put it, please at least try to pretend that you have a few brain cells to rub together. And no, it isn't any better when you don't actually say blacks, kaffirs or darkies but simply run your hand up and down your pasty white face to indicate that somehow whoever you're talking about is just not as good.

I know you think you're not a racist - after all, some of your best friends are darkies right? I'm afraid I have a surprise for you - you're just as bad as the KKK or Julius Malema.

In closing, dear racist jerkoff, please don't assume that because I'm also white I'm just as bigoted and stupid as you.

Thanks,

Rob

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Bad Movies (Part 1)

rob — Thu, 20 May 2010 21:52:51 +0000

When I work I inevitably watch bad movies. It helps me pass the time and I know I don't have to spare too much attention in order to get by.

So far I've had:

Deep Blue Sea - 5/10 Terrible plot, horrible CGI but Samuel L Jackson has a great moment.
Screamers - 3/10 Horrible plot. I mean truly horrible.

Did you know Screamers actually has a semblance of a plot? It's a terrible plot to be sure but it is there.

I think next I'll tackle Tremors 1 - 4.

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Crime isn’t a big problem

rob — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:37:43 +0000

In what is sure to be the latest quote that irritates people, Brigadier Chipu has said that crime is "not as big a problem as people thought". I'm always a little leery of taking quotes directly from media about things like this but I don't see how else you could interpret "It is safe, crime is everywhere in the world. It's no worse in South Africa."

The relevant bit of article for your perusal:

Pretoria - After accepting a memorandum voicing the country's anger about the crime situation in Pretoria on Wednesday, police Brigadier Phuntsi Chipu said that crime was not as big a problem as people thought.

Chipu said the police welcomed the initiative and that "every step with the community to fight crime is one in a positive direction".

However, he said South Africa was a safe country and that crime was not as big a problem as people thought.

"It is safe, crime is everywhere in the world. It's no worse in South Africa," Chipu said.

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Crime-not-such-a-big-problem-police-20100519

Now, I live in a small Eastern Cape city. Crime has never really been a problem for me one way or the other and I doubt it will be anytime soon. But I hear people complaining constantly about the horrendous crime rates in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and to a lesser extent, Port Elizabeth. Is all of that just talking?

It seems impossible for anyone to take a stance that incorporates both the rose-tinted "Unicorns farting rainbows" outlook and the ultra "OMG Zim 2.0!" to form a nice, truthful middle ground.

I'm inclined to say that we do have a problem with crime buuut that it's probably not as bad as some people would like to make out.

I'm really not sure whether there's something drastically wrong with the way the Brigadier is thinking or if public perception has been skewed to such a point that we no longer know what's going on.

I suppose it would help if we had a real time system which showed crime stats per area.

What I DO know is that relegating South Africa to a lost cause is something that will never help our crime rate. Just as much as denying the problem doesn't help,

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22 days and I’m rocking it

rob — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:27:06 +0000

United 4 Bafana Bafana bracelet ... check

Series of South African flags ... check

Car window flags ... check

Awesomely cool SWC Adidas shirt ... check

Tickets to see a game ... chec ... wait a minute. No.

That's right - I have absolutely no tickets to see a game. Thus far, all my efforts to secure some people to bring along with me to watch something in PE (which is by far the closest) have been met with more opposition than freeing the internet in China. Not since Herr Blatter tried to introduce a FIFA charge for cheering at games has there been so much resistance.

It's a little dispiriting.

So, I suppose I will watch a couple of the games from the comfort of my own living room. Which I suppose should be fine - I have a pretty decent TV and good sound. And I guess if I get tired of it all I can just switch over to something else.

I just don't think it'll be the same though. I mean when you get right down to it, there's nothing quite like the feeling of being at an actual, live game.

The shouting, the potential for rain and even the Vuvuzelas.

So if you're one of the lucky ones who managed to a) get a ticket b) get time off and c) find people to go with, spare a thought for me as you hopefully watch some foreigner find out that South Africa really can do bloody well.

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I’ve learned two things

rob — Fri, 14 May 2010 01:02:13 +0000

I don't need anything more than 4 hours of sleep a night. Kick ass.

It's taken me a while to arrive at this conclusion because it takes some time to form the effective habits that allow me to do this. Now I manage another 6 hours of work every night. How awesome is that?

2. Someone, someday is going to murder the people on "What Not to Wear".

Seriously. They're offensive, they're assholes and someone is going to kill them one day. It won't be me because I am impeccably dressed but it'll be someone, someday.

Now however, it's 2:54 am and I'm going to sleep, work done.

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Kicking my own ass today

rob — Sun, 09 May 2010 11:00:27 +0000

So, I've been working on and off on a number of sites that are my own personal projects (as if I didn't have enough to do).

Lately though, I've been slacking a little - hence the stagnation that is BlogNation.co.za. No more of that though. This is the time that I've started working.

I even have the help (and the blessing) of my dear wife who has promoted understanding that I'm just not going to be able to go to bed before 2am every night.

I can survive on 4 hours of sleep - I know I can, I've done it before. And actually, I'm quite proud of how it's been going.

BlogNation is now finally almost production ready. Something for me to throw around the internets. If it works, that's great. If not - then at least I tried and I learned a bunch of things.

Wish me luck. Rollercoaster ride over.

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