The Chronicles Of…

I got a bit of help with my PC recently from a friendly geek, who showed me how to fix up my machine. I backed up all of my important data (music/videos/games…oh, and uni work etc) onto a brand new external hard drive, and was all excited that I’d be able to start a fresh installation of Windows.

I did the reinstall, which seemed to have gone well, and started reinstalling software and downloading Windows updates. I needed to restart the computer, which I did, then it died. Again.

It just repeatedly mentioned missing/corrupt System32 hal dll files and just wouldn’t work, even after I had looked up ‘fixes’ from the Microsoft website and tried everything that they suggested.

Boo.

So I’m currently in the process of spitting the dummy, and seriously trying to work out how to get together the money to just go and finally buy a MacBook. I’m so sick of talking about it, and just want to go and do it. But I had also decided that this was the year that I’d be financially responsible(ish) and not waste money… so although I really, really want to go and buy one, I think I’m going to have to live with the old laptop that Dicker gave me a few years ago (which I’m using to type this up now) for doing uni work etc.

So does anyone know how I change my iPhone over to sync with this machine, and if I manage to do it, will I be able to change again later if/when I eventually buy a new computer (the shiny new MacBook that’s calling to me like a siren)?

Google, here I come…

This won’t be breaking news to some, but I just don’t get politics… it so hard to keep up with and I don’t know who is charge of what and all the different levels, and distinctions between governments, councils, local members, state, federal blah blah blah…

I’m not sure exactly how it all came about but there’s a new leader of the Liberal party I believe, and that had something to doing with our climate change. A bunch of people voted, although I’m not sure who, and some guy won by 1 vote.

Now, unfortunately I’m not playing dumb… I just don’t retain this stuff too easily and have never been able to…

I can’t remember who used to be the leader of that party, and I can’t even remember now who the new leader is.

Now I hear other things like that because of what happened there may be an election… but what’s the point, they just voted for a new guy, shouldn’t we give him a chance before voting him out.

I also hear the phrase double disillusion, it all a bloody illusion to me, let alone a double one!!

Maybe I’m again showing my stupidity here but up until recently I could never remember if ALP stands for Australian Labour Party or Australian Liberal Party. But then someone pointed out that one of the parties just shortens their name, so now I think is it The Libs or The Labs, and surely it’s not The Labs, therefore ALP must stand for Australian Labour Party.

You should know that I’m also not writing Politics off, I understand how important the whole thing is to running a country, but for the average (or below average) person it just seems to be a little overwhelming…

Chris Waghorn

Political Correspondent

Dubbo

• You’re that guy… who doesn’t use toothpaste.
• You’re that guy… who parks their car on church property 24/7 so that people who actually come to church can’t get a parking spot.
• You’re that guy… who pays lots of money to get good tickets at a concert and then watches it through a 2″ LCD screen on the back of your camera.
• You’re that guy… who has a pony tail and where’s a big bloody cricket hat and a backpack and loves to have a whinge at people who actually enjoy being at the front of a concert.

Drove past a fashion shop in Earlwood the other day called “Wot’z Hot“… and I’ve gotta ask: why bother with an apostrophe when there is obviously no concern for correct spelling anywhere else in the title?

Thankyou. that is all.

I was a bit wasted last night after a big day at church running a Pupil Free Fun Day for Kindies to year 6 kids… BIG day! So when I got home I just crashed on the couch and zoned out in front of the TV. For whatever reason Fi and I ended up watching Sea Patrol.

Maybe I should say we endured watching Sea Patrol… I believe that Sea Patrol is Australia’s biggest budget TV show and it’s pure guff. The acting was terrible, the plot was ridiculous and the dialogue was at best cliche…

After watching The Wire from HBO it’s hard to call Sea Patrol “drama”… “spoof” would probably be a better genre.

Needless to say anymore, I was very unimpressed. Thank God it was finale.

Read the story here.

Watch the video here:

I just love this.

I’m enjoying twitter, I like the way some people will put up tweets just about what they are doing including the mundane, and others aim to be witty, funny, cryptic, etc. and still others do a combination of the lot… and in the end if they’re not enjoyable then you just stop following them.

So then there are a ton of applications out there to make twittering easier, which is a little funny because twittering has to be one of the simplest ideas out there, which actually also seems to make it hard for some people to grasp the concept of for some reason, but maybe that’s another rant.

I haven’t done all that much investigation into the different apps you can get, but I’m feeling cocky so I’m going to pretend I know what I’m on about and if someone corrects me then the benefit will be that I may be pointed in the right direction and find the app that I’m really after.

I downloaded Tweetdeck and after using for about 8 seconds uninstalled it, there was nothing too wrong with it, heck it was a good setup where you can group the people you are following and therefore not have to sift through the heavy twitter-ers (usually celebrities) to find updates from closer friends or other interesting sources that you don’t want to miss an update from. But the thing that just didn’t sit too well with me was how complex it seemed for such a  simple concept, maybe complex isn’t the word, but it just seemed so big and so much going on and the like for something as simple as Twitter.

Right now you should be thinking something like well what do you suggest then?? (go on, think it so I can keep the flow of this blog)

So now I can say, I’m glad you asked… Here’s my idea for the perfect app… actually lets call it a work in process that way I can’t be wrong cause I can always “redefine it” and as always I’m open to suggestions anyway…

So here it is…

Firstly it’s a small program and not web based in the sense that you don’t need a web browser to use it, that’s stupid because Twitter is already web based.

It would be just a small box, tiny, in the the bottom right of your screen, in the taskbar would be perfect if that’s possible, where you can Tweet. It would be always on top of all other apps, hence the taskbar being the perfect place as it doesn’t get in the way, and fromthis box you could just type your tweets in as normal.

The rest of the app would basically be a simple screen, like the twitter home page that displays Tweets from you and all those you follow. And naturally you could keep this screen small somewhere on your massive monitor for those who don’t want to take theirs eyes off the action while doing other things.

Then there would be an icon in the Taskbar tray area that would light up when someone on your follow list tweets.

Also an offline version would be great, maybe that’s for the portable version of the app, that you can update whenever you want and then when you finally connect to the net all your Tweets would flow onto Twitter all time stamped when you actually did them.

That’s about it. Maybe there would be a feature where you can arrange lists and the like of those you follow, but I don’t care about that at this stage, it just needs these other basic features.

3 Sux. As in the telephone company “3″.

This our second 24 month contract with 3, and the second time that both of our phones have crapped out just after 12 months in… which means that they’re just out of warranty to be fixed for free and not quite far enough into the contract for them to offer another phone…

They’ve got good capped plans but the hardware is guff and there’s no love and no help from the Indian call centre…

So my phone broke again on Wednesday leading up to the long weekend. Just won’t read the sim card. And I’m in Dubbo and no one fixes phones in Dubbo… But there is a Dick Smith electronics in Dubbo and they happen to sell “outright” phones which aren’t connected to any telephone company. So I picked up a cheapy and now I’m set to see out my contract with 3 but $150.00 poorer for the experience (not including the new phone we had to by for Fi, whose phone crapped out too).

No thanks to 3. 3 sux. or maybe nokia sux… but this happened on our last 3 phone which was a sony erricson… so I figure it’s all 3’s fault.

So this afternoon I was excited to be heading home for the long weekend. I finished PT, packed my bags, and drove… as far as McDonalds at Sutton Forest, where my car’s water pump blew up.

To cut a long story short, I’m now back in my room at the college, my car is at a mechanic in Goulburn, and I’m fairly upset. I’m still holding out a faint hope that either I can get the car fixed tomorrow, or that someone who’s still here by some fluke will be heading back near my place (and would also be willing to drive me back on Monday afternoon), but at this stage I’ll be spending the weekend here.

On the plus side, there’s plenty of study/fitness/boot polishing to be done, and I can get my laundry and ironing done while the place is empty. I also have a number of West Wing episodes, the second season of The Wire, and can catch up on sleep.

Trying hard to be positive.

Travelling to work this morning I hear that the first game in the State of Origin series is on tonight.

Now I’ve seen a little bit in the sports shop windows about it and heard a tiny bit in the news about team selection… but c’mon NRL, for the last couple of years, at least, you’ve had really poor advertising leading up to it, I remember almost missing it last year because it was hard to find out exactly what date the games would be played.

So all I’m asking is that the NRL pick their game up, I don’t watch that many games as it is but I will watch State of Origin and the Grand Final, and you should be thinking that maybe if I watch them I will be sucked into watching more games and thus become a supporter and a money spender into your market.

I dunno… maybe I’m asking too much…

There is also a small thought in my head that this is also channel 9’s fault, put some decent programming on, then I might watch your channel and see an ad for the State of Origin!!

Both of you, NRL and Channel 9, focus a little, concentrate on what you’re doing and maybe the State of Origin will have the hype and excitment it used to!!