Money has been a bit tight lately so we opted to go the cheap broadband again ( read: optus wholesaled naked port ) with Motiv Communications. From day one, we had routing issues to certain websites, that took a few weeks to resolve them. Downloads via Motiv were fairly fast, and almost at limits all times, though we do get some congestion during peak times though not that noticeable.

But the clincher, this time round, was that whoever the techie was that enabled our port locally, was a pure genius. For the first time on an Optus / wholesaled port we did not have any CRC errors. None - exactly how we were used to it so many years on a Telstra wholesaled port. My hat goes off to the techy; more so, i'd even shout the guy / gal a cool drink if they ever owned up. :-)

To top things off, the internet was down for two hours this afternoon and when it came back i recorded my highest sync ever (note: my downstream attenuation is 60dB) and download speed tests to date.

Here's a few snap shots:

Image 1 Image 2 Image 3

Our trip back to Australia with Austrian Airlines, there were two things of interest. I found it amusing that the Exit signs in the plane read "AUSGANG" -- which begs to ask the question 'which aussie gang.' Hmm, it would have been interesting if they also mixed it up with a few 'notausgang.'

The other thing was that we got to try the fire dragon fruit for the first time. When they served dinner, i opened the salad lid and looked at it oddly, thinking what on earth is it. As strange as it was to me it is pretty damn tasty. The one we tried was the white pulp with black seeds.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitaya

Man, i am really looking forward to the NBN's fiber, and such. Probably not as eager as those people that relocate residence -- closer to an exchange -- just to get the extreme speeds etc, and then post results on whirlpool. But close, haha.

We're about 4km in wiring, 2km as the crow fly's from the exchange and considering that, we're getting fairly decent naked dsl speeds and such; cannot fault something that is around 5mbit and stable, and a lot more cheaper than a Telstra supplied service. Voip works great now, browsing and downloads are fairly good, and the hip pocket is not copping it now.

My understanding is that the new Telstra CEO has admitted recently that they are fairly overpriced in a lot of markets, and other sources have also stated that they have hit a low in broadband subscriptions, too; apart from trying to look good in the governments eye and the whole NBN thing-o. Apparently they are going to be doing something about this all with speculation coming in that there is going to be some sweeping broadband changes circa early December, to make themselves more competitive. At $150 per GB, in excess, on a lot of plans, it sure does indicate they're on another planet.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/were-overpriced-telstra-ceo-admits-20091028-hk9a.html

Let's see what the Big T does, come early December!

We, as a family, usually put in a mystery trifecta for the Melbourne Cup. This year round i could not be arsed to go as i was setting up the Asterisk box.

So i get a call from someone i know that they put $110 combined on first place and the trifecta,  and they nabbed $5k. Wow is all i can say!

Remedy recently released a refurbished version of Death Rally, that now works with XP, Vista and Windows 7 - that best part of it is that it's freeware. At a tiny download size of 42 MB, it works quite well here on Windows 7 64bit and i have had some fun playing it -- this is coming from a guy that does not play many car related games.

Link: http://www.remedygames.com/games/death_rally.html

Edit: i managed to clock it. :-)

I bought a Logitech Clearchat Pro USB Head Set with built in mic a while ago - for the most part they were fantastic. I took them with me when we went to Europe recently as i had to make some voip calls back in Australia that were work related.

Brother in-law loved them that much, that i left them with him.

So when i got back home, i had a look at the Logitech products again as i was happy with the old USB headset VOIP ( mic and audio ) quality an such, and decided to get the Logitech Clear Chat Wireless Head Set this time round.

For the most part i am very satisfied with the quality - i predominantly use it with X-Lite on my main PC. It passes the test with gaming, music, movies, and VOIP quality is pretty great for a wireless device. All in all, it gets 9/10 from me.

Been watching 'The Arrivals' - they basically talk about religion (ancient and modern), pop culture, the Illuminati, Jews, the agenda of world power, ufos, Christ and the anti-Christ. Pretty much most of the themes related to current conspiracies, about good and evil, all in all.

I look at everything with a grain of salt, or in this case, a bag of it. Sure, there are some themes in it that kind of make sense and such. I am not going to go into what is in the series, but to say that there is a lot of shock value is an understatement.

Apart from a poorly directed series, if it weren't for the watermarked stock images, direct mobile numbers of the associated people that contributed to it, direct rips (read: unauthorised) of scenes from cult movies and such, i saw it as interesting - in a, 'i have nothing else to watch kinda way.'

It's easy to be bad; good, as a human (read: we all have flaws) is something we need to work on collectively.

I do not play much online FPS games as i used to when i was younger -- for the mere fact i have more to think about than my self these days.

Long story short - semi finals, and old rivals parra and doggies clash; me being a bulldog, and my brother also being a long term parra supporter had to do our thing via a wager. Well, that resulted in me losing a case of beer.

So here we go eels versus storm and i said to my brother - how bout double or nothing. God bless the heart of the crucial moment when the referee fucked up towards the end and pretty much cemented the game for the storm.

The better team DID win though IMHO.. and i still have my two cases of beer. HEHE *phew*

Why in the internet category you may ask? I dont get reception here and watched it live via an internet stream that was high resolution. :-)