Last night, I lost internet connection on my Optus cable internet broadband. In short, the modem went on the blink. Waited for a while and this evening made a call to Optus, you know that 1300 number. The recorded voice message kindly told me their finance team had gone home, “Press 1 for faults and key in my cable delivered phone number so that things could be processed faster”. So I did and fairly quickly, a fellow answered. Told him I had been off air for a day, I was on Optus cable. He did a quick check and told me it was better that he pass me onto his colleagues who were more localised, whatever that meant.

A cheerful girl with an Indian accent answered after some minutes on hold. I brightened up but soon was disappointed. She said I did not exist, my two Optus phones did not exist. In my most friendly and admonishing manner, I said “Aiyoh! I have been an Optus customer since 2000” and she tried her computer some more. Then she had an epiphany – “Are you on Optus cable?”  and I then asked her “Are you ADSL support?”. We had a virtual smile and she said she would transfer me to the right department, asked me whether I wanted a direct number. I said “No, I don’t want to have more failures to need that number”.

Next, the longest wait and a fellow called Vikram answered. This time, he told me that I definitely did not exist. I did the “Ayoh” bit again and taken aback, he finally found my details, apologising for their computers and told me probably it was because one of my services had been cancelled.

Taken aback, (identity theft crossed my mind), we figured out that he was looking at my full Optus history and was reading an Optus prepaid mobile card service. I was now “not happy” and told him this was no way to treat a customer of 11 years.

Then  he started remote diagnostics and told me, it could be due to either the stuff on the pole outside, the white nexus box outside or my modem. I then asked him, with all his diagnostics, he must be able to pin down which was the culprit. After a while he told me from his logs, my modem was rebooting 42 times an hour and it was my modem. That looked like progress. Except business procedure got in the way.

Anyway, two things whilst I’ve got my nerd hat on. Synergy allows you to specify a different network card interface by typing in a static IP address when it is acting as server but if your machine has more than one network card (wireless and wired) and you want to run it as client, it doesn’t want to listen. Hmmm.

And, photographically speaking, we do care about the “look” on our LCD monitor. I’ve noticed that desktops, especially with DVI interface, automatically do their best to the LCD monitor. Notebooks on the other hand, hum and haw because they have their internal LCD screen – when you connect them to an external monitor, the display looks a little sub-optimal – neither the quality of the internal screen nor the quality of the external monitor – and that’s with the internal LCD screen off.

While those things are on the slow cooker percolating through Google searches, how’re you doin?

Update: A few hours is a very short time in IT. Just found out via The Windows Club that at Microsoft’s Garage, Vietnamese developer Truong Do has produced the Mouse Without Borders program – it offers better security, shared clipboard (inclusive of screen captures) across up to 4 Windows PCs, drag and drop files and personalised login screens.

What’s better than one PC with 2 screens? Well, 2 PCs, each with one screen each that are controlled by one keyboard and one mouse, so that CPU and Disk intensive activity are completely isolated per PC.

For some time now, I've passed this neglected blog on the way to the forum - we've been pursuing our various interests and also earning the dollar in our respective lives. Stephen does wonderful system admin work to keep the forum stable, healthy and secure - that guy just gives and gives, thanks Stephen. It's an example of what they say about good IT guys - they are invisible and in the background doing the good things.

I haven't chatted with Charles for a while - he has been puting some effort in updating the Bleeding Edge Facebook presence when he writes on the Green Guide. GTO is well, tirelessly being Chef and IT student. He puts admirable work into the PC recommendations.

Our forum admins and regulars stick by us - a big thank you for your efforts, unpaid and sometimes unsung - but they are real heroes, handling questions from forum members. Forum membership has tailed for for yonks - we don't get the exposure like when Charles was on 774 ABC and thumping such topics on The Age Green Guide. But we still hang out, look after people in panic or confused.

Moi? Ananda's into birds of a feather Facebook groups (there is one for Melbourne Olympus Enthusiasts) and I blog away on photography and Microsoft Office. Lately, I've been on Google+, seems this trial social network has hit 10 million users in the three weeks of launch.

The Melbourne winter is now back to classic style - cold and wet. If you feel like sharing a yarn, come by the forum, you're more than welcome.

What’s happened in the IT sphere? We’ve been pre-occupied with the trees that it’s time to see the forest. In the Microsoft world, we’ve grown used to experiencing a stable, effective and defensible platform in Windows 7. Unless you’re in a corporate environment mired in Windows XP. Office 2007 has proliferated, overcoming initial circumspection with The Ribbon. There are even corporates who skipped Office 2007 and are now on Office 2010. Fancy that! Jumping over an experienced version into a brand new one – again, that points to a perception that the product is stable and useful. In late breaking news, Microsoft Labs delivered that bundle of joy, Kinect. Not only is it an impressive lead over last year’s Wii controller but hackers rapidly acquired and transformed it to fulfil their dreams.

But in other aspects and in the overall personal sphere, Microsoft may have this year, finally lost the edge. Bill Gates retired and we will not see the likes of the notorious Internet Tidal Wave memo from Steve Ballmer or Bill’s appointee for head technologist – Ray Ozzie (who has since declared defeat and retired from Microsoft too).

Guess Jakon Nielsen’s Mental Model blogpost is relevant in the sense that as users, we need to be aware of what mental models we establish and hark back to.

Recently, two of the software giants have come out with more Cyber Security awareness education measures.

Microsoft has Own Your Own Space a downloadable PDF book for teenagers (and parents) to read.

Google has launched a Family Safety Center.

Usually, the Windows XP PC isn’t the main production / family PC any longer – it’s so cheap now to resolve the issue by going to the mall, buy a new Netbook, not so Netbook or an inexpensive Notebook / Laptop with glitzy screen, bigger hard disk, dual core processor. However, owners of old machines don’t like old machines to go to waste so if they can rope in a nerd to fix up their PC, they will – feast of a Chinese dinner at the Hakka Restaurant with some 2002 Loxton Merlot thrown in.

Moving forward in time, disinfection tools vary – the techniques remain similar, but what is free and available are updated. Enumerating the stages in reverse….

But how backward are you? Does the Internet figure in your life at all? Some people love to take out their Nokia phone circa 2000, with numbers and cosmetics rubbed off and tell the world – “Hah! I love being a Luddite – a phone is for the rare phone call, when I deem it necessary. I don’t need the Internet on my phone”  Are you one of those?

Me? I’m having an off day and reflecting on what I do to enjoy my day. I listen to music – a thing I’ve done for many years, pre-Internet. I shoot photos – an activity much invigorated by the Web of interaction with like minded folk. I watch scraps of Old Media TV but really that’s for when I want to dull my brain and go to sleep, Doc Martin and Masterchef not withstanding.  Old favourites like the cop shows, medical and House dramas – too much of the same  is getting quite, quite disinteresting.

But TED on the Web – if you haven’t woken up to a reaching out of minds, hop on and envision with the thought makers. A nice way to use the Internet speed, bandwidth and quota.

With documents, it’s easy. If your document has gone missing or is badly corrupted, you can simply restore from backup or from a copy on the ubiquitous USB Flash Drive. A no brainer, actually.

But what happens when a file is a database or a spreadsheet that keeps multiple tables and has a long running lifespan? It can be the case that you end up with one file having table A intact with table B out of date or missing records, another file, the reverse.

Brings to mind to ask the master of the backup job whether the backup is daily, weekly or monthly. And when the old backup media is recycled. Do you really have 30 single days of backup or just one backup, 30 days old?

If you have 30 single days of backup, how do you restore in such a way that you have 30 separate files (or systems) so that you can do a compare to see which ones are worth merging or keeping.

Think about it and make the contingency plans. Before it’s too late.

Ananda

Charles has been very kind to the Web community – he funds this blog and the forum and he has often noted that the forum gives free advice and discussion to those who seek it. We have very valued voluntary administrators who write with a clarity, patience and persistence. For the blog, he has allowed myself, Stephen to blog from time to time and we try to do that when our time allows. I am sure Charles will write once in a while when he has time too.

To all our faithful, thanks for your support and attention. Keep the faith.

Ananda

So, here I am, looking at the 2010 programs and wondering what the thrust of this 2010 Suite will be. Certainly, the 2010 Movie gives us an old chuckle.

But then you have to watch a geek explain the Developer roadmap in another video for the lack of clarity to sink in.

What’s coming through is:

Image via Wikipedia

I facilitate a fair number of public classes as well more private, focussed sessions. One topic that inevitably turns up is “When do I Right Click?”

Sometimes, it’s brought up surreptitiously. Sometimes it’s brought up with some trepidation and a whisper. But sooner or later, there it is.

What can be worse is, if the participant / old friend / colleague looks exasperated and annoyed-like, with puzzlement. When they double click on something, what next happens isn’t what they intend or want. They proceed pin me down.

It takes a while to explain. I try:

• You Right Click to Inspect / View the Properties of an Object – then I have to explain what’s an Object and what are Properties
• You Right Click to take a different action to one that is caused by a Double Click
• Some of my favourite things are on the Right Click menu

The enormity and significance of the Right Click slowly dawns and everyone smiles happily. Until. I get the next question. The next question is:

My thoughts on the new Opera?