The Life and Times of Christmas Shopping Land

Nothing like hanging out with a million other people crammed into a shopping centre, the night before Christmas Eve.

There were the two girls who squealed and gushed and OMGed when they saw the Eclipse board game.  One of their boyfriends exclaimed "sometimes it's so embarrassing being with you".

On the other hand we have the guy whining about something in a book store.  Until his girlfriend tells him to "suck it up, princess".

There was a malformed Santa wandering around with an abortion of a reindeer.

A man who had piercings coming out of his cheeks and both lips, who looked like an extra from True Blood.  But an ugly extra.

There was a chick whose tshirt rose up at the back so much it looked like she was wearing an apron.

A group of guys just sitting and chilling in lounge chairs around a BBQ like it was christmas day itself.

A shelf had a leaf blower on it for sale.  Not too unusual, except for the fact that there was a sign above it saying "role playing".  What the hell?  Do people sit around all year complaining that their job sucks, and they wish perhaps, just for a weekend, they could pretend that they blew leaves off footpaths?  As opposed to saving burning pandas from starving children?

One store seemed to just play the best of Bon Jovi, over and over and over, with the only concession to variety being covers of Bon Jovi songs.

Another store had doof doof thumping, with people dancing on tables, in christmas gear.  Which they were removing, to the pounding of the beat and the approval of the crowd.

Elsewhere during a quieter moment, there was a group of about 10 police officers all huddled together.  Must have been a good night, for they all looked to be having a bit of a guffaw.

Unlike some chick whose phone conversation I mostly overheard, where she was tearing strips off her boyfriend for going off with his mates and not even bothering to text her.  I tried to hear more, but other people kept talking and I didn't want to shush them.  And then she walked off and I didn't want it to look like I was obviously stalking her.

However, I think the most memorable moment was when this little girl had just pushed her mother's buttons a little too much and started wandering off.  There was this moment when we all saw it coming: the mother striding over, her hand raised up, and then *smack* across the face.  There was this collective gasp before everyone, as one, turned away and started hurrying off to be somewhere else, anywhere else.  Note to self: read some Christos Tsiolkas.

Wikileaks and the legal case

Wikileaks has just been cleared by the Australian Federal Police of accusations that they broke Australian law.
Now, were they in possession of stolen Australian cables?

As far as I'm aware, Wikileaks doesn't have any stolen Oz cables.
However, let's look at it from the US' perspective.  Do they have stolen US cables?  Well, no, because they wouldn't have the actual cables, just the information.
As far as I'm aware, the information - some of which is classified secret and confidential to the US government - was supplied to wikileaks.
Now presumably, receipt of this information cannot itself be a crime.
After all, if Bradley came up to you and told you something that was a state secret, you could not be prosecuted for hearing it.
And if he said here, check this out, and then showed you a document that said 'classified' on it, again, presumably, although you have seen something you were not cleared for, I would not think you could be charged for having seen it.
But if you then publish it?
Interesting question.


Chasing the legal situation from the US angle:

Here's discussion from ten years ago (2000 CE : pre 9/11):

The Attorney General discusses unauthorised disclosure of classified materials at a Senate committee.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/renoleaks.html

Pertinent information beginning with this paragraph:

"You also asked me to address the adequacy of the criminal statutes currently available to us to prosecute leaks. As you know, there is no general criminal statute penalizing the unauthorized disclosure of "classified information.""

Implying: free press, publish what you want: after all, is there even any law that says it must be true (hello The World; The Truth; and other such tabloids)
However, it then talks about possibly bringing in some law changes to this.  Beforehand it also says it's been policy "to focus the investigation on the universe of potential leakers rather than on the reporter" with the implication that they *could* focus on the reporter if need be.  And the final and most damning lines are just a little further along, saying
"Several statutes address conduct, including disclosure, with respect to certain categories of information such as classified information concerning the communication activities of the United States (18 U.S.C. §798) and Restricted Data relating to atomic weapons or energy"
and
"the Espionage Act [...]  make it a crime punishable by 10 years' imprisonment for an authorized or unauthorized possessor of documents or information 'relating to the national defense' to 'willfully communicate' the same to 'any person not entitled to receive it.'

I'll comment further on the Espionage Act later on.


The above becomes more interesting once we look at classification levels.

The material published by wikileaks is a mix of unclassified, confidential and secret.  None is classified as top-secret, which is the highest classification level.

Descriptions of the categorisations can be found as follows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States#Levels_of_classification_used_by_the_U.S._government

We can see that the three classified levels are all rated in terms of damage to national defense.  Hence from the above quote regarding the Espionage Act, it would actually seem  to be applicable to anyone who communicated *any* classified material to people not cleared for it - in other words, what wikileaks (and every other paper out there today) has been doing lately.

For a look at an earlier case involving actual top-secret material, we have the Pentagon Papers case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

Top Secret information regarding the US Government's policy toward the Vietnam War, was leaked to the papers and published, on the front page of the New York Times.

"Prior to publication, the New York Times sought legal advice. The paper's regular outside counsel, Lord Day & Lord, advised against publication, but house counsel James Goodale prevailed with his argument that the press had a First Amendment right to publish information significant to the people's understanding of their government's policy."

Ah, the people's right to know.
Which comes under the Freedom of the Press - which is part of the First Amendment.  Forget the fact that the US is ranked 20th by Reporters Without Borders in terms of press freedom, up from 36th the year before.  The First Amendment protects the press from the government interfering in the distribution and publication of information and opinions.


But, as brought up earlier, what about the Espionage Act?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917

Well, it turns out that it's fairly focused on information during war time.

What is war time?  Is it always war time?

Furthermore, Freedom of the Press cases have been successfully fought since, and the First Amendment rights reinforced since, the Act's introduction in 1917 during WW1.

The Espionage Act has been brought up recently as some have wondered whether wikileaks would be prosecuted for breaching it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112905973.html

Some choice quotes include:


Perhaps the most significant issue is the Constitution's protection of people's right to speak freely and to exchange ideas.

"If the government were to prosecute the person who received and disseminated the classified information - as opposed to the individual who leaked it from within the government - mainstream media would express the concern that they could face prosecution for reporting information they routinely receive from government insiders," Wainstein said.

Fundamentally, Weiss said, the WikiLeaks case "is not about the disclosure of troop movements to al-Qaeda or giving the recipe for the plutonium bomb to North Korea. This is the widespread publication of information that is important in determining the future policy of the United States, that could be very important for people in assessing how well our government is doing its job. It's a good example of the problems created by the First Amendment clashing with criminal law, the law protecting national defense information."


Finally, the quote:

All the experts agreed that it may be difficult for the United States to gain access to Assange, who apparently has avoided traveling to the country. Most nations' extradition treaties exempt crimes viewed as political. "I can imagine a lot of Western allies would view this not as a criminal act, but as a political act," Weiss.


Postscript:

Welcome to the brave new world: UN considers moving to total internet regulation in the wake of wikileaks.  China, eat your heart out.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/242051,un-mulls-internet-regulation-options.aspx

Best TV series of the last decade (2000 - 2010) ?

The sort of thing you think about now and again when you're rewatching some particularly good series.
If you'd asked me a couple of years ago, Firefly would probably get the nod.  Each episode is brilliant, and often much funnier the second time around.
Battlestar Galactica would probably be a contender.  There's so much packed into it, with some nice sweeping arcs - but I never finished watching the series and stopped midway, even though I was still right into it.
Other shows ... well, there are a lot of other really good shows that have come out over the last decade, but I don't know that there are any other serious contenders.
The number one spot, though, might go to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  When I heard it was cancelled I was heartbroken.  But sometimes you have to let go.

Interesting that of the three I list, one only made a single season and one only made two (with the first season being essentially half length) whilst the other made a full five.
They're all sci-fi, though one is earth based.
They're all drama types; two serious and one (Firefly) lathered in humour, though also serious in general.
Two (BSG and T:SCC) heavily explore technology vs faith.
Two I own on DVD (T:SCC and Firefly) and one I didn't buy when it was like 9.99 because I'm a dildo.

What shows am I forgetting?  What have I not given due consideration?

The Digital Novel

Neal Stephenson has created a startup to develop a platform for digital novels:

http://www.nytimes.com/external/venturebeat/2010/09/01/01venturebeat-writer-neal-stephenson-unveils-his-digital-n-97561.html

The article mentions they aim to bring images and video and music to the novel.
Meh.
What I would like to see, and what I've wanted to see for quite some time, are dynamic glossaries that reflect where you're up to in the story.

For example:
Bob (from page 1+)
A young orphan boy living with his granny in the woods.

Bob (from page 100+)
A bearded young man who is the lost nephew of Prince Peter.

Princess Bob (from page 150+)
A delicate woman, born a boy in a forest, married to Prince Peter.

Queen Bob (from page 250+)
Ruler of the land of Laurenthesia and widow of Prince Peter.


Too often descriptions in lengthy novels / series are only applicable to the first few chapters, or they risk giving away too much information about plot development.

(and now I yearn to discover whether Queen Bob the Just can hold her tattered kingdom (queendom?) together against the invading forces of darkness...)

Stand up for equality at the 2010 Australian Federal Election

It's appalling to think that in a presumably progressive society equality is something that's handed out to select citizens.  Despite the fact that we're into the second decade of the 21st century, marriage is still only available to heterosexuals here in Australia. 
Marriage is a union between two people, and the fact that the government does not recognise this is a sad state of affairs.  But what is perhaps worse is the fact that the government is voted in by the people, and the people of Australia clearly have not found equality a serious enough issue for the government to move forward.

For when the government decrees that marriage is only to be recognised between one group of people and not another, is this not the very definition of discrimination?

Let us look back on 2010 as the year in which we said "Enough is enough: let us end the discrimination against those who are not heterosexual." 

If you find equality for all Australians an issue worth taking a stand on, then join me on election day in voting up those parties that support same sex marriage, and place last those parties that continue to promote their outdated, discriminatory policies.


For:
Australian Sex Party
Secular Party of Australia
Australian Greens
Australian Democrats
Liberal Democratic Party
Socialist Alliance
Socialist Equality Party



Against:
Family First
Democratic Labor Party
Labor Party
Liberal Party
National Party
One Nation
Christian Democratic Party

The Trials and Tribulations of Internet Access.

The Trials and Tribulations of Internet Access.

or; Internet, Internet, Lama Sabachthani?

Having moved house not that long ago, I signed up for the assortment of utilities, including internet access.  Now the standard internet connection in this part of the world is ADSL2+: it's the type of connection I had before, and it's what I expected to continue with.  In fact, before moving I just told my ISP to move my service to my new address.  A standard procedure, in fact, for them and most other ISPs.

Alas, it turned out that my new location was, shall we say, not quite as urbanified as that of my previous residence, despite being geographically closer to the heart of the city.  The ISP could, however, offer me last century's method of connection: good ol' ADSL 1.  Tempted as I was to look elsewhere for something better, I refrained from doing so given that I would have the outlay of setup fees and contracts to sign up to.  So it was with heavy heart that I accepted their ADSL 1 connection.
Time passes.
They then contact me and tell me that I cannot even get their crappy service at my new location.
Shock.  Confusion.  They can provide no internet service to me.

But I get over it and cut them loose.

I go hunting for a new ISP, someone who deals in 21st century tech.  I find one - of course I do, you can't go 10 metres in this country without stumbling across a new ISP.  Looking at some of the names you'd swear some giant computer sits in a darkened room spewing out word fragments that nascent companies are scooping up to form ever-new permutations to use as their name.  Bits of "tech", "net", "tel" and the hip new letter "i" (replacing the has-been "e") and you could already generate names for half a dozen ISPs without trying.  But I digress.

So I sign up for an ADSL2+ account with an ISP that services my area.  They say it's all good, you're signed up, it might take just 5 or so business days before I have a connection.  Whatever. Let the good times roll.
And then, after a few days, I receive notification from them that despite me being told I was accepted and would shortly be connected, I was in actual fact unable to get internet access via them entirely.  Of course, this was not their fault, it was someone further upstream who'd provided the initial faulty go-ahead.  Of course.  Why would it be their fault?

Gar, off I go to try again.

With yet more searching I find a new ISP that, yes, does indeed service my area (sigh, sure) and signed up with them.  This time I get placed into a pending queue.  Apparently this can be for one of a number of reasons, but I was shortly contacted by the company and informed that in this area they used a Telstra DSLAM and the exchange had no free ports.  And I needed a free port to connect to.

This sort of thing happens now and again.  Companies have a finite amount of connections available in their exchanges for customers, and as the community's needs grow, the company needs to upgrade its infrastructure.  So normally you'd get thrown into a holding bin until there's suitable demand, at which point they fork out the cash, do an upgrade, connelct the new customers.
Wait a few weeks, maybe a few months is the usual line.  Something optimistically short to save you from despair.  Or looking elsewhere.
The game, however, has changed slightly in recent times.  The Australian government, for better or for worse, has come up with a plan to lay down and connect up fibre to the home.  High cost, high speed.  This has just begun recently, but the entire process will take quite some years to complete.  What this means, though, is that companies such as Telstra are not going to be overly-inclined to spend money on upgrades for copper wire networks that are going to see a perhaps massive drop in users over the coming few years.
Of course the ISP did not say this to me.  It's just something you (mis)read between the lines.  All they said was, "There are no ports available; we're cancelling your order."
Things were starting to look fairly bleak as the picture became clear.  In the area I was in, ISPs did not tend to have their own DSLAMs; they just used Telstra's.  And Telstra had no ports available for them.  And they, in turn, had no ports available for me.

I tried one more ISP in the hope that maybe there was something still available.  The vain hope that perhaps it was all just coincidence, and there really were ISPs that could provide a service to me.  Alas, after signing up I was placed in a holding bin once more, told that there were no ports available for me to connect to.  I was informed that it may take some time, but hopefully in the next couple of months I'd be good to go.  I waited a short time, of course, but to no avail.  A week later, with no progress, I cancelled the order myself.
Loss.
Despair.
Grief.
On the one hand, it was shocking to think that I would be unable to get internet access at all.  On the other hand, I knew that this wasn't strictly true.  For the alternative citizen there's always mobile internet.

Ah, mobile.  Mobile internet
Still, desperate times call for desperate measures.

I spend an evening wading through the wireless options.  Sort them, categorise them, filter them.  Let's cut out any options that charge excess fees, or charge you for data going up as well as down, or ... hang on, there's pretty much nothing left!
I finally settle for a wireless plan that doesn't look like it's been designed to empty my wallet as fast as possible.  I head on over to the ISP's sign up page, where they have a section for entering your address.  They use the Optus network and claim > 96% coverage.  No problem: I may live in an outer suburb, but it's not like I've moved under Uluru.
Imagine my surprise then when I find that, alas, coverage does not extend to my residence.
So, correction: it is rather like having moved under Uluru.
If they can't reach me then it stands to reason that other ISPs using the Optus network probably can't reach me either.
Options are starting to get very thin indeed.

Wireless with the incumbent Telstra looks to be about the only thing left to me.  I make the phone call.  They've got 99% coverage: there's simply no way that they can fail to reach me.
A little voice inside my head says that some people have to make up that other one percent.  That voice gets throttled.
I end up speaking to some cheery woman, who assures me that their wireless internet can indeed be provided to me: there are big sighs of relief all around (technically speaking I may have been the only one sighing with relief, but it was worthy of the sighs of several people).
We get to chatting and she waxes lyrical about the various Telstra products she's got, and how I can achieve various discounts by signing up for other services.  I'm enthused now too, so started jumping on board several services that I was needing/using anyway.  Hell, I was in such a good mood that when she brought up horoscopes (yeah, where does that come from in a "I'd like internet please" phone call?) that instead of going off on an hour long critique of the practice, I just professed ignorance of my own astrological star sign.  Let's get back to me supplying you with money for a service, lady.  Ooops, wait, good thing I never used those words.

So in the midst of this, by now, rather long phone call to Telstra, I happened to mention that the reason I was going with wireless was not because I web on the go, it was because I could not get ADSL.
Cue helpful lady.
Really?  she cried.  I'm sure you should be able to get ADSL.
No, my dear, I calmly replied.  I'm afraid I can not.
I shall look up your address on our ADSL system right away! she cried.
By all means, I sighed resignedly.
Gasp!  Yes!  You can have ADSL internet!  she cried.  (excitedly, I must add, should it not be apparent).
Madam, I was under the impression that there are no ports available on the local exchange, I hesitatingly prompted.
Really? she cried, I shall look immediately!

And within moments she had performed the requisite searches and was able to assure me that in fact Telstra did have a number of ports available on the local exchange.  Now, I was a little chary.  Understandably so, you can imagine, if you've read the ordeal so far.  But I took her up on her offer, cancelled the partly-completed entries for wireless and related services, verbally signed off, hung up on cheery woman and sat down to ruminate.

You see, until this point I didn't actually know that Telstra were out of ports on the local ADSL exchange.  This was merely something I had surmised from what other ISPs had stated.  It was entirely possible that Telstra did indeed have a small number of ports in reserve for their own (potential) customers.  A spreadsheet that I had seen, purporting to be up to date, claimed that there were a small number of ports available on that exchange.  I had dismissed it at the time as being unlikely, especially given that other ISPs were knocking me back.  But it makes sense if Telstra sell off ports in groups, and at some small threshold refuse to sell any more in order to prevent themselves from running entirely dry before they upgrade and add more.
Or at least that was some sort of thought process bubbling away.

So I'd got internet at long last.
Well, technically I still didn't, but it was acquired, sign-off, done and dusted.  I just had to wait for it to all be connected, which was, of course, just a matter of a few business days.
I wait a few business days.
I wait a few more.
I then get a letter in the mailbox from Telstra saying that it will be connected soon once I sort out some issues with them. Issues?  What issues?
I call them to see what the trouble is.  They want to know whether or not I was previously hooked up to another ISP at this address.  I had not.
Ah, excellent! they reply.
They can now complete the setup process and will send out the modem (to arrive after some few business days) and will connect the line (also after a few business days).  This was a 30 second call to initiate action that could have been done a week ago.
Irate sigh.

So maybe another week later a modem rocks up.  Fairly standard fare; a bit of hardware, some coloured cables and an installation CD should I want it.  It's a modem.  You plug it in, it works.  Or at least, that's what they did back in the old days.
I figured that by now the line should be activated and I should be able to receive a few packets.  I plugged the modem into the wall just to see what lights would dasblinken, but was dismayed to see power and status only.  The adsl light remained dead.  Figured I might as well hook the darn thing up to the PC, plug in some real values for username and password etc and see how the thing fares.
This is where I discovered Telstra modems are a little different from the sorts of modems that fly out of discount computer parts stores (hello MSY!).

I fire up a PC and load a browser and there's a million leftover tabs now all displaying some sort of Thomson software notice telling me that it's sorry but it can't help me get to my destination.  Speed software, or some such thing.  Now, I know that I can't get to my destination, I'm just here to jump to the internal web page of the modem.
I have to say that the way 192.168.1.254 just flies off the fingers probably says something about the quality of my modem connection in the past, and not something good.  If it rolled off any easier, the damn thing would be instinctive, like type dir in a cmd prompt, or ls in a terminal, or bye in an ftp session (apparently I have this instinctive urge to leave ftp rather than actually transfer a file, who'd have thunk it?).
Well, lo and behold, Thomson is also sorry that it cannot take me to this 192.168.1.254 address.
I have to admit the unexpectedness of this outcome was a little stupefying.
The first thing I thought of was that little installation disc.

Cue a flashback.

A couple of weeks ago when I'd been on the phone to cheery woman, she asked me what operating system I used.  Now, the phrasing of the question was something along the lines of "Do you use Windows(tm)?"  At this point there may have been a brief (dare I say ephemeral) flash of a thought regarding my home setup of linux boxen (at least one of which works, for certain definitions of "works").  But the words that came out, of course, were "yeah, sure".
It's the sort of thing that you immediately think, hey, that didn't sound too convincing.  But it's not a test.  Though if it was a test then I'd pass, because I'm awesome.  Except for the part where I told them that I run windows and so they sent me a windows installation CD.  Hmmm.
Of course, the reason you say Windows is because you're not really saying that you're running Windows.  Not explicitly.  This is not a question of which OS you are running.  This is not one of those times when you say "Debian" and get a follow-up question of "is that the Hurd kernel, or gnu linux, or bsd ...?".  You know you're just going to get a "sorry, did you say Seven?" response.  So you take the easy way out and give them some sort of vague generic yes windows response to save yourself several minutes of baffled questions.

Where was I?  Oh yes, recovering from the flashback with a windows CD in my hand and a linux box (sorry, gnu-linux box (waves to RMS)) in front of me.

Deciding to leave the CD as a last resort, I bash around until I figure out that the modem's internal webpage is on the 10.10 subnet.  With this access, I put in my username and password and check the webpage's access status.  With little hope, I should add.  And sure enough, there was no connection.

Looked like this CD setup was required after all.

I didn't have wine installed, not that it occurred to me at the time.  But I did have a windows box or two, perhaps, kicking around somewhere.  So I drag one back from the grave (it's amazing what one can do when the need is acute) with the most bare-bones skeleton of a windows installation you've ever seen. No service packs; no third party apps; and icons the size of my fist.  But it reads CDs, so I plonk the disc in the tray and run the setup.
Several steps later, I'm adding in details and nexting my way to a fully connected ADSL connection.  Except for the bit where it says it can't connect to Telstra and setup fails.
I want to pluck out my eyeballs.

So, modem fails to connect to the Telstra service.  It's the dasblinken lights.  It always comes down to the dasblinken lights.
I call up Telstra because I need help.
Now Telstra have got a pretty fandangled smart computerised phonebot service happening.  I'm getting asked various questions and voice recognition starts taking my (rather hesitant) answers and progressing along some sort of internal service path.  But at some point I lose my nerve and bail.  Really, it was more of a time issue than anything else.  But then the question was, what other time was I going to do this?  So I call back, and woah, like some sort of freaky stalking ex-girlfriend this thing's telling me that it knows I called recently and wants to know if we should continue where last we left off.   "Yes" I stated with more resolve than I felt.

The question structure of the Telstra phonebot was, I have to say, pretty good.  However, there was one question that I thought could have been better worded: is there an ADSL light on the modem?  The problem was that there was a little label for the ADSL connection being established, with a LED to indicate this: does this mean that I say yes because it's there, or no, because the LED is not lit up?  For the record, I went with the negative, then found out by the follow-up question that this meant they'd determined that I had a different modem to the one that I had, but, due to brilliance on my behalf (and perhaps some on the side of the Telstra phone software) I managed to get back on the right track.

The phonebot has gathered the requisite data and I'm passed onto a human.  This human female asks a few questions and confirms some details and then passes me off to another human who can better help me.  Now this chap starts at the very basics.  Like, do you see the modem?  Do you have a grey cable?  Which hole in the modem did you plug the cable into?
This was awkward because, one, I wanted to scream yes yes it's all fine but the damn line isn't activated!  And two, I was at work and didn't have the modem in front of me so had to dodgy-up some answers to satisfy him.  The grey cable one took a couple of promptings from me ("look, it's a grey cable and there's a grey hole on the modem and there's a yellow cable and a yellow hole on the modem and I plugged grey to grey and yellow to yellow.  And the grey ADSL one is RJ45 and the other one is not.  Yes yes, it's all good").
Finally we get to the part about the LEDs on the front, and with little prompting I'm able to tell him about the general meagre lightage and he's (yes, this is the exciting part) determined that it seems there might be an issue with the line (yes, yes!) and so he does a bit of looking at his end and determines that the line hasn't been activated.
Gar!
Which is frustrating, but rather what I was hoping, since it seemed the easiest thing to resolve.
He says he can activate it.  It'll just take a couple of days or something.

So theoretically my line is activated slash on the verge of activating.  I powercycle and cable-plug-deplug the modem on a OCD basis over the next few days, which turns into a week, with no result.
I ring up Telstra again to inquire why I have no internet access.
This time it was much simpler.
You have no internet access because you signed up for an ADSL 2+ account and there are no free ports.
"There are no free ports?", I say, somewhat dumbfounded, as I sit there at work with my colleagues standing around listening.
Do you know how hard it is to pay attention to someone on a phone call with people laughing their heads off?  Sigh.

I'm told that there are some free ADSL 1 ports, however.  It's slower, of course, but they can connect me for the same price that I was willing to pay for the higher speed.  Joy.
Now I just have to wait another couple of days for the line to be activated.
Cue me powercycling and cable-plug-deplugging the modem for some days again.  Which turns into a week.  Again.

I ring up Telstra to inquire as to why I *still* have no internet access.
You have no internet access because there are no free ports.
Well, yes, I spluttered irritably, I know there are no free ADSL 2+ ports, that's why I was told I'd be connected to ADSL 1.
Oh, no, she replied calmly, there are no free ADSL 1 ports either.
Which was the roundabout way of saying that that ADSL service you signed up for is not something we can deliver.  At all.

Anyway, this chick is sweetness and light itself, and tells me that I can get *cable* internet.  You know, I nearly burst out laughing at that point.  It was like the turning point where the cruel just becomes the absurd.
She waxed on about how great cable was, and how she thinks it's much better than ADSL, and that if she had the option she'd be like totally cable.  I acquiesced (what else could I do?) and signed up for a plan which was pretty much the same as the original ADSL one, except with transport provided by cable instead of copper.
She said that she's pretty sure that I should be able to get it.  It's there in my street, they just have to get a guy to go out and hook it up, it's unlikely that there'd be problems.
Sure, I said, and arranged a time and hung up.

Now, I have to say, that during my many phone calls with Telstra I spent a bit of time on their phonebot service, and a fair bit of time talking to humans and getting passed along from one department to the other.  I had Indian accents going to US accents to Australian accents.  And yet it all held together pretty well.  You never felt like you had to repeat info told to the previous department and you always felt like things were progressing (okay, that part wasn't supposed to be funny).  Even though the operators sometimes had to start with basic questions to ensure the equipment (that they couldn't see, after all) was hooked up properly, you at least got the impression that they knew what they were talking about and had some decent training.  So despite the bad rep that such service call centres tend to get, I found them to be pretty good.

Anyway, back to this tragedy.

I get a letter in the mail from Telstra telling me that they've actually decided to upgrade my ADSL exchange, so they'll be able to give me ADSL in a few months.  I swear they do it for the lulz.  I ignore it and wait for the cable guy.

Some more time passes.  I'm old by this stage, and nearing retirement, and it's been several decades since I last experienced the internet.  But a cable guy comes out to rectify all that (or at least the lack of internet access).
This chap wastes no time in hauling out gear, asking me where I want a cable point coming out of the wall (the very back of the house - the opposite corner in fact :p) and then he's off shoving cable down pipes.
I wait with baited breath.

The cable guy calls me out to the front with some concern.  Hell, when I see that the part of the street he's connecting it to is under my neighbour's nice, picturesque stone naturestrip then I become a little concerned too.  Damn, but it looks like there's a quarry out the front of his house now.  Well, I guess we all have to make sacrifices.
The cable guy asks me to shove cable up and down into a pipe at the side of the house whilst he takes a look-see out by the quarry where the cable should be coming out.    Surprise surprise, it's not.  With a little more poking and prodding down there he comes back and gives me the verdict.

"It looks like you're missing a chunk of pipe somewhere around your driveway, connecting your house pipe to the street pipe.  You're going to need someone to come out and dig fresh connecting pipe if you want to continue."

I thought about the fact that I'd have to consider letting the landlord know about this.  Not to mention the fact that I (slash landlord, which means I and we all know this) will have to pay once work leaves the nature strip.

With heavy heart I tell him to hold off organising anything whilst I think about my options.

"Sure thing", he replied, "Hey, have you thought about applying for ADSL?"



Addendum.

Received excessive Telstra phone bill.  They decided not to waste time and started charging me for internet access when I signed up: they managed to get a couple of months onto this bill.
After I explained how I was unable to get any internet access they said they'd cancel the charges.
And when she asked if there was anything else, I couldn't help myself and asked if she knew if the local exchange was still due to be upgraded shortly.  She said she didn't know, but suggested that the best course of action would probably be to sign up ...

French Film Festival 2010

The French Film Festival is an annual event in Australia, playing for about two weeks in most of the state capital cities.  I managed to catch a couple at the 2010 event.

Someone I Loved

Drama / relationship flick from France about life, love and loss as seen through the eyes of a woman and her father-in-law. 
It takes a little while before the film reveals where it's going, with mere hints in the beginning.  From there it really blooms as you follow the characters, with the time flying by.  Very satisfying, in that I like to find films that really have a French feel at the film festival, rather than a French version of something Hollywood.  Generally drama / relationship films are a safe bet.  Well worth watching.

Skirt Day.

A female teacher who wears skirts to school in defiance of the principal's and students' reactions has a day go from bad to worse when one of the students brings a gun to the classroom.
Wasn't my first pick, nor my second.  Ended up a little short of time and that winnowed down the choices, and this one bubbled to the surface. 
In some ways I was reminded of Class of 1999 and The Principal.  Sure, the links are tenuous (not really a spoiler, but Skirt Day is set in the present and doesn't feature killer androids) but when I think of teacher/student movies, those two really stand out.  Where Skirt Day differs is that whilst it does contain a lot of tension, it's a very human story, and one steeped in modern French culture.  It's probably unwise to treat Skirt Day as gospel when it comes to portraying the typical French school (in the same way The Principal, probably, does not portray the typical US school), but from an outsider, it's very interesting to see the racial and religious mixes.  Those two issues are covered by the film via student-student interactions, student-teacher, state-school and also amongst the wider community. 
The modern french culture that this film is positively steeped in, as well as the strong performances and gripping story, make it well worth watching.  Of all the films I saw at the French Film Festival *cough*, this film gets my Number One vote.

The Northwest

Well, I've finished moving from the south-east of Melbourne to the north-west.  Probably should give at least a brief update on what it's like out here.  This description of a typical drive home from work will have to do for now.


It's night-time, perhaps a little after 10pm, as I'm cruising down the freeway on my way home.  It's been mere days since I moved to this new suburb, but I'm slowly starting to get to know the general layout.  First one freeway, then an adjoining exit/entrance, then a second freeway and finally residentia.
The car in front of me is doing a leisurely ninety.  I'm in no rush and with the connecting road coming up on the left I refrain from overtaking it.

The new lane opens up on the freeway for those turning off and I begin to languidly contemplate flicking an indicator on and drifting over.
No chance.
As I sit there stunned with one hand frozen on the indicator stick, the car behind me explodes into action and jerks into the half-formed lane, asserting its ownership of the road from time zero.  Windows down, it accelerates past with the faint odour of rapidly dispersing cigarette smoke: two lively chicks in the back; male driver with a cigarette dangling from his fingers in the front; another passenger next to the driver, possibly male.  Walloping basslines blast out as it thunders off onto the exit: the speakers probably counting for half the weight of the car.  Which isn't as impressive as you might at first think, given the cheap blue plastic look of the body that's been pimped out with more lights and bling than a two-dollar-shop's christmas tree.

In quick succession the blue car is followed by a yellow convertible and a mean metallic green number.  Yellow is smooth and curvy, shiny and compact, sporting a cliched lavendar vanity plate and a nondescript chick in the driver's seat.  Green is angular, bulky, grunty.  Though it's a warm night, all windows are fully up, and in contrast to the other two cars, the only sound it's emitting comes from the engine.  Starlight glistens on the three Gigeresque ridges undulating along its side as it tears past.

By this point my lane has split and the car in front continues on straight ahead, leaving me open to peal off onto the dual-lane exit ramp that connects up with the second freeway.  The cars ahead are slowly distancing themselves from me as I floor the accelerator approaching the first S-bend.  The exit speed is posted at eighty, but you're not really trying unless your speedo is kissing one-ten.

Yellow car makes an early bid to get past Blue and stumbles across to my lane like a drugged-to-the-gills octagenarian.  First there's the slight drift over the road's dividing line with a pause, followed by a lurch all the way into the right lane that actually results in somewhat of an overshoot, before a correction brings it back.  There's no point in having ample shoulder on either side of the road, after all, if people aren't making full use of it.
Green car sticks behind Blue in the left lane.  Close, but not too close.  Probably doesn't want to run afoul of Yellow's erratic driving.
Blue car has a slight lead, with Yellow maybe half a length behind it.  At this point, Green is stuck in third position, unable to get past the effective blockade.

As the road whips to the right, Yellow is a little slow to react and ends up somewhat over its lane and partially into the left.  Blue car has drifted a little further out to compensate, but the two cars are still pretty damn close.  Blue driver doesn't look too phased: he's got two hands on the wheel now, with the cigarette clamped in his mouth.  The two chicks in the back are going apeshit, however, with one yelling at the front passenger as she jostles forward between the seats and the other screaming abuse out the window.  Yellow driver is paying no attention to the verbal tirade, but that's probably because she's trying to stop the vehicle from sliding further out.

The road straightens out for the merest of distances, allowing but a moment's respite before snapping back to the left.  Yellow takes the bend late again, this time swinging wide to the right, half on the outer shoulder.  Blue is on the inside now, but can't gain any ground.  Both cars are struggling with the curves at such speeds, but unwilling to back off.  As for Green car, it seems to be handling the bends fairly well, but has had no opportunity with the blue and yellow barrier in front.

The road snakes back for a final bend as we approach the entrance to the second freeway.  Yellow car, in an attempt to avoid repeating history, takes the bend early.  Too early.  The convertible sticks to the right shoulder, this time riding the inside of the road quite severely.

This was the opportunity that Green had been waiting for.  Two lanes?  Fuck that.  Green car slices across into a tighter radius despite having already entered the final bend and hung there, left wheels cutting dead straight over the dashed line as it split the lanes.  Its nose poises for the briefest of moments between the arses of Blue and Yellow, ensuring it would have the clearance it needed.  Green then floors the accelerator, engine roaring as it tears through the narrow strait.  Side mirrors must have had five centimetres clearance tops from either car, but it's enough.  As the road spills onto the second freeway, Green roars off in a blitz of speed; now well clear of its companions; now a blur in the distance; now just a dimming speck cresting the horizon.

Two eternities and half a lifetime later I eventually merge onto the freeway myself.  With a bare handful of cars in sight, I head onward home, sedately cruising through the night.