yaleman.org

So, the van was annoying me (I drive a 1980 Holden panel van as my daily driver) and I was looking for something to do - I’m notorious for needing “projects” to keep me occupied, as my coding and so forth doesn’t really make me do anything physical. A mate was moving to Perth and his car was most likely going to a wreckers because the engine block had a hole in the side of it. I ended up buying it for a grand total of $300, which isn’t bad for a rolling car that needed a new bottom end in its motor, a new steering arm, and a bit of bodywork. Once that’s all done, it’ll obviously need registration etc, but that’s just part of the fun!

I guess this is a little backwards, putting an update about a project up before I put information up about the actual project, but that’s what I’m doing. My project is building up a Holden TF Gemini as my new daily driver. It’ll have all sorts of fun things, like EFI, a carputer, and eventually a supercharger on it. There’s plenty more information that I’m going to have to post up, but here’s what I need to say today… The ECU is on its way! I’m using a MegaSquirt bought from DIYAutoTune.com along with a bunch of other things. I’m just about to leave for work, so I’ll put up a proper post with pictures etc tonight when I have more time.

Well, we in the channel #rice, where some friends and I dwell, have a thing for “fundies.” Fundies are those people that wake us up on weekend mornings, spreading their religious ideals, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. They don’t come around to the street (or at least our house) where my parents live, since such events as me removing their bikes from the poles they were chained to (by lifting them over the top of the 7 foot plus tall pole) and moving them down a block or two. This “thing” that we have isn’t a love for fundies, nor a common interest in their ideals - it’s more a “we know you, we hate you, we have to ridicule you at every turn.” This is probably bred from our dislike for religion, and helped along by such fora as Fark and SomethingAwful. The real reason for this post - as you may have guessed from the topic - is the fact that I got my first spam from a fundie today! Click on the “read more” link to continue on this journey of religious self-discovery! 🙂 This is the full text of the email that I received:

Well, it’s 7:04am, and I’m awake. Training for service coach starts at 9am, and I’ve been awake for an hour or so - hooray for being a crazy insomniac *sigh* I guess I’m excited - I’ve wanted to be something more than just a call center agent for a while, having a bigger part to play in the running of a company, and helping people where I can. It means a lot more responsibility, and dealing with a lot of escalated issues, but I’ve already been doing the correspondence side of things, and the escalated calls - that’s just more people yelling, and more telling them that yes, you did sign that contract, and no, we can’t do anything about it.

Well, I work in a call center - Orange Mobile customer care. I’m one of those people you yell at when you’re having a bad day, and you can’t accept the fact that sometimes, a mobile phone doesn’t work. They are terribly made little pieces of plastic, and you expect them to work perfectly all the time, and it’s never your fault - or your responsibility - when they break. So now I’ve been in the position of “agent” for a while - being the monkey on the phone - I’m moving up to “service coach” which allows me to talk to the A-grade annoying customers with problems that they won’t accept can be fixed by the mere mortals that are the agents. Service coach is basically supervisor - doing the hard things, making sure the rules are followed etc. It’s a little bit of a payrise, and it’s a lot more responsibility, but it’ll be worth it, and I’ve already been basically doing it for a while now 🙂

Well, it’s been a long time coming, but I finally got myself my own server. The one that I was on was truly slow and well, nothing good can be said about that. I was getting it for free, but the issues we were having with it weren’t even worth the trouble (a friend was paying for it, and it died twice in six months, hdd failure it seems).

So I’m on my own server now (dedicated box, Pentium4 2.4, 512 ram, 80gb hdd) which is nice. It’s a lot faster and more responsive than the old machine, and I’m hopefully going to be able to host a few sites on here with little or no troubles. I’ve already got Ricetek, Rexy’s and Lozza‘s site on here so far. If you’re looking for hosting, just send me an email to yaleman at this domain - it’s super cheap, and I try to help people out with coding and other issue solutions all the time!

There are two main ways to move files in PHP - either copy the file to the new location, then delete the old one, or rename the file to the new location. There are a few different problems with both ways of doing it, and in this short guide I’ll try to cover as many different advantages and disadvantages of both ways.

Well, I’m still surviving so far, the patches give me the incentive and the power not to put more tar in my lungs. I seem to be trying to cough all the tar that’s already in there up at the moment - yay for a hacking cough that hurts like I’m on fire when it happens. I’m nearly through both the week-long packets that I bought, and I went a couple of days without a patch, and I survived fine. I don’t think I could go a day at work without them, it’s a high-stress environment, and I can’t deal with it at the moment without a patch. There was a day that I forgot, and I nearly tore a workmate’s head off after a frustrating call from a customer.

Seems that the amp that I bought (the Blaupunkt PA2100) is rather unique. The connectors that it has on it aren’t the standard connectors, so it’s probably one from a factory-installed stereo in a prestige car of some sort. Click on the images below to see the amp/connectors on it - if you can work out what they are, please tell me, and if you know where to get them, give me the info!

Wow, I really should have listened to the person at the chemist’s counter when I bought the nicotine patches. She made a passing comment about the fact that if you wear them during sleep, it can have some effect on your dreams. They most definitely did - two dreams so far (normally I don’t dream at all unless I’m quite sick) The first one was explainable from dream analysis and recent events, but the one that I had last night was downright weird. I can’t remember any of it (should get up and write them down as soon as I wake) but all I remember is an intense feeling of foreboding when I woke up. I think I’ll leave them off for the next couple of nights, see how they go.