ChapsNet: Home

Cat Revenge

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:11:13 GMT

I love Cat wash day. Nothing gets rid of a cats superiority complex like looking like a oversized bedraggled half-drowned rat..

That'll teach you to treat me like staff instead of an owner..

Library finished, now needs extension

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:07:55 GMT

Now that my little Library nook is finished and all painted, I Already need to extend it. Sure I could clean out the books and maybe get rid of some of the older ones but books are our friends and I find it hard to part with them. Granted, I do have a few duplicates that i really need to get rid of but I have many more downstairs that are waiting to go somewhere...

There isn't much more room in there but I may be able to extend around the walls a little bit. However, the space I lose in putting in corners may cancel out any extension that I put in. I'm sure that I will be able to come up with something. Perhaps go the whole hog and replace those massive windows with something smaller and putting in some windows seats that have bookshelves under them...

There is another section of wall that is outside of this shot that i can stack up with shelves but first I will need to do something with the excessive sunlight that comes in before I put in a bookshelf that directly faces the windows. Some blockout curtains will probably do the trick. That will probably solve the issues with all of the windows reflecting far too much light onto my TV as well...

The laptop....

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 04:28:10 GMT

After all the buildup, i finally set up my new Dell XPS 1530 laptop for use at home and work. I have set up Virtual PC to use and XP work image for Remote access (because our lame-O VPN solution has XP-only clients and budget approval for an upgrade is not yet approved), a Vista Business Work image for in the office and an Ubuntu image for seeing what all the fuss is about. It works pretty well so far. I am still having some performance issues though, it seems a bit slower than it should be. the McAfee Internet Security doesn't have the ability to exclude virus scanning on the VM images and unfortunately everything is on 1 partition. That is pretty much everything they tell you NOT to do. Oh well, until i redo all the partitions and the like, I'm stuck with that at the moment

Anyway, the laptop is bloody fine otherwise....

I am still alive....

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 11:29:34 GMT

Just very busy with stuff at the meoment. I should be able to start writing some more within a week or so..

2007 Wrap

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 08:39:29 GMT

Well, 2007 is done and dusted. We saw out the year in the family Montville holiday house in the midst of al the cloauds and rain. We had visibility of anywhere of 20 to 100 metres for 90% of the stay. When the view out back is of the entire Sunshine Coast, that means the clods are indeed low.

2007 was a good year for us... if i can remember enough of it...

The most momentous occasion is that we finally purchased our House this year... We have realised the Australian Dream. we have since done some minor work such as painting the living room but the major work is due to come in 2008 now that we have settled into the routing of paying off a mortgage.

BSR moved to their new location which went fairly smoothly. While it is a pain to be out in the sticks, it is good for me as it only takes 15-20mins to get to work and there is stacks of parking. Considering the state of traffic in Brisbane, this is a big plus. My job is a little more stale than it was before (I hope) and we have achieved positive results at work and have definite plans for next year. this is far more than we had this time last year.

Colleen has evolved her job into a part-time basis as well as getting further opportunities to be started in 2008. this means more time with Emily and a whole lot less stress. her work at Wooloowin State School as P&C President has been nothing short of astounding. we have re-introduced the dress and also a (button-up) shirt for the students. These are far more suited to little girls and boys during the hot Summer months. All of the events have raised money as well as having been well-attended. We have also been able to fund Electronic Whiteboards for the classrooms. These are amazing to see in action.

Emily has improved her schoolwork and is enjoying it more. She has also become far more fluent with the computer and has now got her own Pink Xbox 360 controller. She is a whip with using the Media Centre and is right into Lego and Star Wars... I really don't know where that has come from??!! Her Maths is much better and grows more confident with it each day. Playing Monopoly, Yahtzee and various card games is certainly helping. Next year is Grade 4, a move into the senior half of Primary School.

Good to see the Aussie Cricket Team still slapping the opposition around with impunity. I actually attended the First test at the Gabba with my Dad on the first day and was there on the third day as a guest in a corporate box. Collingwood flew high getting to within a straight kick of the eventual Premiers, Geelong. Considering how much the other teams were smashed, it was an admirable effort. Alas, the retirement of the legendary Pie, Nathan Buckley was sad to see, her was a hero of mine, never giving up as he carried the Pies through the 90's and then going oh-so-close against those dastardly Lions.

I hope everyone else saw out the Year in style and best of luck with 2008

Holidays...

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:59:05 GMT

not much posting for the rest of this week and next week, I'm on Holidays...Woot

Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault finished, Halo 3 Finished... alas household chores to follow...

My Home PC Lives

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 06:21:01 GMT

At last i have gathered the bits to rebuild my home PC. It has died in a Motherboard failure in the first week of August. Unfortunately, i had been hoping that it would last a little longer. My pre-existing setup had run fine for a number of years, dating back at least 5 years.

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
aBit NFS-7 v2.0 Motherboard
350W Antec SmartPower Power Supply
2 x 512Mb RAM
A 40Gb, a 80Gb and a 320Gb HDD
XFX 7600GT AGP Video Card
DVD Burner

Now because the Motherboard died, ~~I decided to~~ my wife let me upgrade to a more modern setup.. so now i have the following...

Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33Ghz
Gigabyte P35-DS3P v2.0
CoolerMaster Trio 650W Power Supply
2 x 1Gb RAM
a 40Gb and 2 x 320Gb HDD
Inno3D 8600GTS Video Card
same DVD Burner

Both systems were running Windows Vista. As you can imagine, my new one runs it loads better. Not only that, i have space to install games and play them on top settings... everything is running sweeet now...

Desk Workspaces

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 05:11:57 GMT

now that i own the house that I am living in, I can't wait to fix up my desk at home to a setup that finally looks great and works even better. I am not very good at keeping a desk tidy. Maybe it is because everything doesn't have its place or whether I am too much of a packrat or not, I just seem to end up with messy desks.

Somehow, I need to get my workspace ( or HomeSpace really) from Al Gore mode to Bill Gates mode. Now, technical equipment aside, seems to me that this kinda shows the wrong way and the right way to have your desk set out...

I have been keeping a bit of an eye on LifeHacker and Unclutterer and other sites of their bilk to get some ideas and some of them are very good but the problem is, i don't know what type of 'look' I want to go with.

I have a Server rack that contains ( or will contain 4 or 5 servers plus at least three desktops to share amongst all of us to hose. this means i need to haves desks for three people and still have it looking neat and tidy. As you can imagine, hiding the absolute tangle of cables that this will introduce is of paramount importance. A desk cannot look great if there is a rat's nest of cables visible.

Should I go for a sleek modern look, a more traditional study space or should i just go for a mash of styles that somehow works together. As long as it doesn't end up looking like an Office Cubicle, i think i will be OK.

If anyone else knows sites that can help inspire or design my desk space, please let me know...

Technorati tags: workspace, desk, interior design

The Australian Dream

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:03:20 GMT

Well, as of today, we have now become proud Home-Owners. We now own our little patch of land and our 4 bedroom house in Geebung, QLD and are no longer tenants. of course, this means that I now have to pay rates, insurance and mortgages but at least we have something to call our own.. An Asset at last!

Already the list of things my wife want to fix have been mentioned. I think the Bathrooms, Kitchen, Fence and Rumpus Room have all been mentioned. I can see a lot of weekend work coming up which isn't so bad because we can't afford too much now that we are paying a mortgage...