So I’ve come to the realisation, after being responsible for lawns for the first time in 20 years, that I just don’t want to do it.

Truth be told, I’ve always known that I don’t want to mow the lawns, or take care of gardening, but when the front and back yards hit 4 foot high in some places, it was time to do something.

WauloK contacted Jim’s Mowing, and after some “missed appointments”, the guy showed up yesterday, mowed everything, pulled out a bush and cleaned up.

As it stands, I’m hiring him on an ongoing basis to bring the lawns up to good condition. Regular mowing, spraying and fertilising.
I’m also going to have him pull out the rest of the bushes, and perhaps rebuild mum’s retaining wall as it is leaning to the point where it will fall over.

We also had some discussion about drainage, as when it pours here, there isn’t sufficient drainage to move all the water. While I’m not sure we’ll get to it, it’s great to see that he had a working solution.

Hopefully in 4-6 months, EvilHouse will have beautiful lawns with thick, healthy grass.

Last night a bunch of us from the Australian Electric Vehicle Association went to Sydney Dragway with Mark and his electric Clubman to play on the track.

The previous best was a 16.8, but this time we were going to play with the Zilla (controller).

Unfortunately, we found out that the higher the amps were set, the lower the battery pack voltage was towards the end of the track. While it was nice for the take-off, the continued drain on the pack reduced the top-end, and Mark crossed the line at 17.157 @69.94mph.

Lots of talk was had afterwards about new batteries. Who knows where this fun little car will go.

So I’ve just sat through the hour-and-a-half keynote that was Apple’s introduction of the iPad.
First thoughts? Cute coffee-table computer. Good for web surfing, eBooks, iPhone-style games, email, etc.

If I didn’t already have an Apple laptop, and an iPhone 3GS, I would definitely jump at the top-end iPad.

Is it the magical device that Steve Jobs claims it is?
Absolutely not.

Having had a bit of a chance to read around, and think about what I’ve read in the keynote, I have a few thoughts:

- Data plans in Australia suck, and I’m sure there won’t be anything interesting for the iPad.
- No flash. While this isn’t really an issue on the iPhone, here we have a “computer” which can’t even play facebook games.
- No camera / no videoconferencing.
- Awkward to hold/use while sitting on the couch, or laying in bed.
- Big ugly bezel.

- iWork usability on the touch interface seems awesome. I really like it. Hell, I’m umming and arrhing about buying an iPad, just so I can use iWork on it.
- Photo slideshow when idle on the charging dock. Now I won’t buy that digital photo frame I’ve always been thinking about.
- Ever watch StarTrek? How cool are those PADs?

Let’s say for a moment that this was my portable device of choice, and I carried it instead of a laptop.
I could no longer transfer pictures from my digital camera. File transfer from me to other people would be a lost art, unless I was in a 3G zone, and I could email them over, and most importantly, there is no built in GPS, so the Google Maps become infinitely less useful.

What exactly is the iPad for?
It’s way too big for any pocket, so it’s not the always-with-you portable device that the iPhone is.
It’s not open enough, fast enough, or able to run “normal” OSX programs, so it’s certainly not your main computer.
The only use that I can think of is coffee-table, or showing off to your friends in a cafe.

I’ll have the 64gb 3G model for my coffee-table, thanks.

It’s amazing how we take water coming from our taps for granted.

This morning I left the house, and there was a water crew digging up a neighbour’s front yard. Water running down both sides of the street, and even bubbling up out of the Telstra pit out the front of my house, flowing in to the drain.

I didn’t think much of it, and when I came back from doing the shopping, decided I wanted to take a shower, and wash up some stuff.
Unfortunately, we have no water.

Hopefully things will be back shortly, and the water in the Telstra pit won’t affect our phone line or ADSL.
I’m still online, so it can’t be too bad at the moment.

INTERNET
ADSL: CONNECTED
Mode: G.992.5 (ADSL2+)
Upload: 1023 Kbps.
Download: 12675 Kbps.
UPTIME: 0:01:57:18

I jumped in to mum’s car a few days ago, when I went to the place WauloK was house-sitting, and it ran rubbish.

I thought the timing may have been retarded, because every time I pressed on the accelerator, the motor started shuddering, but there were not too many issues cruising at a constant speed.

I took it to Mark’s, and suggested we check out the timing. Mark started with the spark-plugs and leads first.
Turns out there was no continuity on two of the four spark-plug leads, and after a quick trip to SuperCheap Auto for some new leads, the car runs fine.

Now that the car is running more properly, we have discovered a fairly decent exhaust leak towards the back of the car.
I don’t know whether or not I’ll fix it, or just sell the car on eBay.
The only real issue is the hail damage, but at $500, I’m sure I’ll find a buyer soon enough.

The vehicle is made up of inedible parts. On no account must any parts be bitten, sucked, chewed or swallowed.

Wow, two broadband updates in one day.

LOLO is back up, and Telstra have processed the line changes, so the line now shows as theirs, and not on iPrimus ULL. Brilliant.

The service at the old place is less than six months old, so an ETF (Early Termination Fee) will apply if I relocate it.
Not wanting to waste any more time, my ii-Contact suggested starting a new broadband service at the new EvilHouse, and waiting out the few days with the old service, then cancelling, so the ETF won’t be charged.

New service has been applied for, but connection date/time is currently unknown.

Time to update the broadband router with the temporary username/password for the new service.

There are no words to express how happy this makes me. 3G internet has been the word internet experience of my life.
Even the days of the 2400 baud modem were more pleasant.
While the speeds were slow, there was barely anything to transfer.

Today’s internet is a different place entirely. HUGE data caps that get blown in just a few days, because the amount of stuff to do on the net these days is so much more data-intensive.

People talk about downloading “Linux ISOs”, and other such things.
Has anyone tried playing SecondLife? This monster can easily suck down more than a gigabyte of data in a few hours, depending on what you do.

Then there’s ABC’s iView, youtube, streaming radio stations.

Take a typical Monday night. WauloK and I sitting on the couch, streaming Audio from Tech Talk Radio while we’re also streaming video from the cameras in the studio.
Two different types of streaming at once, and then I (or both of us) log in to SecondLife.

When we are graced by ADSL once more, this will be our reality.

3G can’t even handle one SL session, or one video streaming session. We’re currently operating of off two 3G USB connections just to listen to the show, and sit in the text-only chat-room.

I woke this morning to find the message “LOLO is down”.

While this may not mean much to most people, to me it means that Telstra’s database, which holds all phone records is unavailable.

Without this database, we cannot establish if the records for my phone line have been updated as yet, and as a result, any progress is delayed until LOLO is back up.

If there is one place where you can count on Telstra more than any other, it’s when you want to move to them from another provider.

True to their word, the phone service was changed over today, hours before they said it would be. Sure, I’m using them so that I can keep the number that mum had, then moving to iiNet, but I couldn’t figure any other way to do it.
Damn you iPrimus and your ULL.

I have already had a chat to one of my iiNet friends, and there is a task pending for Monday to check things out. LOLO updates for the recent changes should take about three business days, so I’m expecting nothing on Monday, but Wednesday should come with some good news.