Saturday night saw me entertaining a fascinating conversation with mike on why my blog is broken when I heard a loud bang and my PC switched off.

Yes, I have a UPS. Yes, it worked. Yes, I tried to shutdown. Yes, it switched off before I could shutdown anyways. My UPS lasted maybe 30 seconds… okay? Oh well, I don’t particularly care. It’s there more to add an extra layer of protection to the funky source of electricity that is Eskom right now than to actually serve as a backup power supply. It works fine for those 2-second brownouts that are occurring with increasing frequency these days, so it serves its purpose really.

But back to my story — I heard a loud bang. It was very odd, everything turned off — sort of. My server sat there beeping at me telling me it didn’t have enough power to turn back on. So clearly there was some electricity, just not very much as was evident by the very pale glow coming from all the lights. Checking the breakers nothing was off. Odd? Opening the curtains revealed all the neighbours lights to still be on. Odd? This was not one of Eskoms “load-shedding� cycles gone wrong then.

A few minutes later all power was gone and so were our neighbours’ lights and all the street lamps. Identification! Okay, so we knew the problem wasn’t just localised to our house then but rather a few blocks. Wonderful!

A quick call logged to Eskom revealed no knowledge of said problem, and no apparent “load-shedding�. So imagine our surprise when 2 guys pitched up in one of those trucks with the arm on the back not even 15 minutes later. Obviously a quick response isn’t exactly something you’d normally expect from any national service, so the cynic in me can only believe these guys are getting paid overtime, and well, late Saturday night is about as overtimey as it gets.

So after a brief explanation of what had happened they were off. I heard them driving up and down the roads quite a bit (their truck was noisy and rattled quite a bit), but whatever they were doing it seemed to work and the electricity was back up and running after about an hour. I can only assume that something blew up and they replaced it?

Isn’t it funny how we as South Africans generally praise good service, when this is how it should be normally? I guess this is a result of all the shocking service that is dished out to us on a daily basis with everything else.

As can be expected I added a few hundred km’s of mileage this weekend, and subsequently forgot to take any photo’s when there was still daylight.

I haven’t really had much opportunity to drive other cars so I don’t have a point of reference to base my opinion on but in terms of performance; it’s a 1.6 so that part is pretty obvious. I’m glad now that I didn’t buy the 1.4, as the frustration from lack of power would probably outweigh the benefits the newer car has. As it stands even the 1.6 doesn’t have the power I want. I had expected this though so I’m not particularly dissapointed, and for what I’ve got it is still pretty good.

The fiesta certainly has a lot more traction than my old car; this was pretty evident in the corners and twisties but I wasn’t prepared to test just how far I could push those limits before it started losing traction. Otherwise the drive was pretty fun, but getting stuck behind cars not even doing the speed limit wasn’t, especially when there’s no space to overtake.

When shopping for my car I was seriously considering selling my bike in order to buy a Fiesta ST. Selling my bike would have had 2 effects, it would have given me a rather sizable amount of money to add to my existing deposit, and I wouldn’t have had to pay the insurance on it any longer. In retrospect the decision to keep my bike was the right one, just going for a drive this weekend made me realise how much more fun it is to do it on a bike. Even had I got the 2L it cannot compare to the sheer power available at the slightest twist of the wrist and the subsequent exhilaration you feel when you power your way out of a corner after almost being horizontal.

Even so, a bike can’t beat the convenience that is four wheels and an air conditioner; especially in hot weather. Putting on full gear in 30 degree heat is not fun, though once you’re moving you don’t actually notice it, it’s only when you’re stopped at traffic lights, or taking off all the gear (and especially putting it all back on if you have to).

So my host (du0 networks) was kind enough to “join� my domains. This saves me the hassle of having to figure out why the site redirections and CNAME records I added weren’t working properly. I believe the .org domain is just a symlink of the .net domain, so my domains should pretty much be interchangeable now — though wordpress is configured to use the .net domain.

Use whichever domain you want if you’re too lazy to update your links, it doesn’t make much difference to me now that they point to the same content; and I don’t see that being changed any time soon.

Otherwise this blog needs a theme, I’m sure I won’t be the first to say that the default themes really suck, especially being that the default font on my current theme is pretty hard to read (at least it is to me). Hopefully the theme won’t take me too long to sort out and alter to my satisfaction.

Apart from *finally* having my domains fixed and working, I also took delivery of my car yesterday.

After many months of deciding what car to buy, followed by weeks of searching for it, then a few days of negotiating the price and coin flipping, then two weeks to organise finance, insurance, servicing, licensing, registration, etc. I finally took delivery of a Magnum Grey 2005 Ford Fiesta 1.6i Trend (3dr) at shortly after 3 yesterday afternoon.

Obviously used (if the 2005 part didn’t give it a way) but in very good condition (how bad can a year old car get?) and going for a pretty decent price (I got R10k knocked off) I decided to buy it in favour of a new Fiesta Trend 1.4i, which the salesman was pretty eager to sell to me I might add — even managed to get R7-8k off the price there.

It has only slightly more than 19k km on the clock right now, so for a year old car — first registered March 2005 — that’s a bit lower than average. They serviced the car for me in addition to the normal valet they do as well as rotated my wheels, which was quite nice as I don’t have to worry about another service for quite a while now. Whatever they put on the steering wheel (Armourall?) makes it damn slippery though and not so fun when the thing slides through your grip midcorner; hopefully that will wear off soon enough.

After going through reams of documentation and signing half my life away, then doing a final satisfaction check, I finally managed to drive away at about 16h40… straight into peak traffic. So my first drive in the car was in bumper to bumper traffic — oh the joys of Cape Town traffic. So between the traffic and my night blindness I’ve hardly had a chance to drive the car, but my initial impressions are very favourable over what I was previously driving :/.

Pictures (because I just have to!) and more thoughts will come in a few days.

Ok, so I finally migrated my blog.

It only took Dataspace 7 days to submit my domain transfer application and then ZANiC another 15 to process the request.

So that explains the absence of posts on my blog.

Everything has been moved over and should mostly be working, if someone finds anything broken please leave a comment — I’ve had to modify the database by hand to get some stuff working, so I may have missed something.

Also people may want to update their links or rss feeds to .za.net instead of .za.org. I have added a CNAME record, but it’s not really working at the moment.

Ye, Nick wants to know what my pc is… so the rest of you who read this get to know too as I doubt many bother to read the comments. And so, on to the good stuff:

• AMD a64 3200+ (cheap)
• MSI K8 NF4 FI Mobo (and also cheap)
• 2x 512mb Corsair XMS Pro DDR500 (from my old pc)
• XFX 7900gt Standard [450core/1350mem]
• SBLive Value (old machine; this will get replaced with an Audigy4 eventually)
• Same HDD’s from my old pc — 120GB Seagate ATA, 120GB Western Digital ATA & 250GB Seagate SATA
• LG 16x DVD-RW/RAM & Pioneer 4x DVD-RW (from old pc)
• Same case (TT Xaser2)
• Zalman ZM460 Silent PSU

That’s the guts of my PC; none of my peripherals changed. So only my graphics card, CPU, motherboard, and PSU are new. The 250GB SATA drive is toast and is going to be replaced in addition to a 300GB Seagate SATA that I will be getting to go along with it.

Well, that’s my PC. It’s a lot faster than my old one (which is now gathering dust on my desk) mainly due to the graphics card.

Lastly, before anyone says anything, I am fully aware that my menu/sidebar is gone. It dissapeared in a cloud of smoke and I don’t feel like putting it back right now. It will eventually happen but who knows what that will be.

Dataspace kinda went pop a few weeks back. My blog went offline and nothing was working. I received no notification whatsoever and only on going back to their site did I discover what had happened — they are now netprazision or some such.

Ok, so I have 50MB of storage; certainly not a lot, but more than enough for what I run on this site (blog, gallery and feeds). Obviously the gallery takes up most of the space, and the feeds are text only with hotlinks to the pictures. Before my site went offline I was at around 40MB out of my allotted 50MB; when it came back online I was suddenly receiving emails telling me I was at 133% of my quota. Great. So would any of the web devs that read my blog care to explain to me how 40 suddenly became 67. My maths isn’t the greatest but I’m pretty sure 40 + 0 does not equal 67.

So if you’re reading this post you should — like me — be wondering: A) why my site hasn’t been suspended, and B) how did I post this if I’m over my quota anyways?

This really makes me wonder what trickery they did when they moved my site. I can’t find any new content that they placed there for me, or any evidence of backups they might have made on my behalf. Oh well… anyone got any ideas?

Anticipation always seems more exciting — as exciting as waiting can be — than actually receiving something. This being said; it seems all I do these days is wait. It’s running on 9 months for my bike and 2 months for my PC upgrade. Unfortunately in both cases there is nothing much I can do about it as I’m relying on other people.

In my bikes case, I have to rely on other people to fix it since I have neither the tools nor the expertise to do it myself. Even so, given the tools I’m sure I could have done a better job. One thing’s for sure though, it would not have taken me 9 months (this is assuming that my bike gets fixed in the next 2 weeks, otherwise I could easily see it running in 10 months or even a year).

Just a quick update: my right fork has a 0.2-micron kink in it. Rad. It might have been 2 micron actually, but I can’t remember. Either way it’s small, so I don’t know how that should affect my oil seals, but this is the reason given for my constantly leaking forks. This bit of information was given to me 2 weeks ago and I haven’t heard a word since.

In my PC’s case, I’ve had to rely on quite a few people who essentially wasted my time. I was initially getting my PSU and graphics card from the states through someone (if you’re reading this, you know who you are). Both the items were high demand; but this point clearly escaped him as I went through the process of telling him what to order and when at least 5 times. That wasted a month or so and needless to say, I went elsewhere. Keep in mind that they were both high-ticket items and he would have been making quite a chunk of profit for not doing much at all.

After having another order delayed for my 7900gt from the states, I eventually just bought one locally on Friday. The card was only added to the dealer’s pricelist on Thursday, so I guess waiting worked out for me in the end. It’s still more expensive and not as good as the one that I was getting from the states, but at least it only took me a few hours to organise and collect — even though I was again relying on someone else partly; at least he was willing to help, unlike some others.

Another PC delay was my PSU. This was very odd though and this is why: Zalman ZM460. The dent is rather curious; only the rear grill is pressed inwards, and not the edge where it meets. There is no other damage to the PSU, not even a scratch where it’s dented. Additionally there was no damage to the box or its contents, and when packaged, the grill lies flush with the one side of the box, so there’s no chance of having the contents cause the dent. Besides, that grill is steel… it’s going to require quite a significant amount of force to dent it like that. Which leads me to believe that it was a manufacturing defect, or it was dented prior to packaging. It was sent back to the dealer (Frontosa) who claimed that it was damaged during shipping. There was no scarring on the box, so I’m pretty sure this is just a way to shift blame, as dealers are wont to do these days. Anyways, a few emails and just over a week later I had a brand new replacement at no extra cost to myself; this included having the dented one overnighted back to them and the new one overnigthed to me. So I guess some people do still believe in service — thanks to Sybaritic for this — their prices are decent (as I’ve mentioned before) and in my experience the service is good.
Now I’m waiting for the motherboard… that’s another long story; in summary it’s been delayed by 2 weeks so far. Let’s see how long this one lasts. At least I’ll be saving somewhere in the region of R300 by doing this though so at least it’s still worth it.

Lastly, I’m waiting for my car; though this one is entirely my fault :].

Ok, I have no idea who reads my blog. But if there are any bikers that need a pair of boots (or perhaps you know of someone that wants a pair of awesome racing boots) I’m trying to get rid of my Sidi Vertigos. They’re size 43EU (9UK; 9.5USA) and are black.

Reason for selling: size problems. Curse my foot shape! The boot fits perfectly, but my foot slides forward ever so slightly and my toes get jammed against the hardened toe of the boot.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before but in case I haven’t: foot/ankle injuries are the most common type of injuries in motorcycle accidents. There are a lot of bones and nerves that area so there’s a lot of potential for injury and pain, so wearing good boots is pretty important for when you have an accident. Now I have to buy a different pair of boots :( so expensive, yet so important.

In case anyone is wondering, the bike went back on Tuesday to get stuff sorted out. Though I don’t expect a timeous resolution. My father sent a pretty nice letter to the insurance company, who in turn forwarded it to the guys fixing my bike. So hopefully this will give them some more motivation to get the job done right.

I’ve been wanting to upgrade my pc for quite a while but the need to pay of my debts and the reluctance to shell out a large sum of cash has prevented me from doing so. I finally took the plunge and all the bits for my new PC are either on their way or in the process of being organised.

So far I’ve received my CPU and my PSU. The CPU is only an A64 3200+ since AM2 is right around the corner and I didn’t want to spend much money on a CPU and motherboard that has been superceded by newer tech in such a short time. AM2 is quite a step up for AMD, not in terms of performance but in terms of technology; in fact there’s hardly any performance gain on the outgoing socket 939 platform. So with AM2 coming (June; with motherboards being preshipped) I plan on doing a second upgrade in the not-too-distant future. As for the PSU, it’s a Zalman ZM460. It’s a pretty high quality and high efficiency power supply, not to mention quiet, so 460w should be more than enough to power my machine, even with an SLI setup.

Otherwise I’ve ordered a fairly cheap SLI motherboard (MSI SLI-FI) and a new DVD Writer (these things are dirt cheap and my current one is hosed). Lastly I’ve put my name down for a 7900gt from the states. All in all this will give me a pretty good gaming setup. The main reason for all the other bits is to be able to use the 7900gt. Since it is a PCIe card, and my current machine only has AGP, upgrading the graphics card now would have been a waste of money.

 As always I never do a complete upgrade, so I’m still carrying over a lot of bits from my old machine (case, ram, hdd’s, soundcard, etc.).

So I’ve got a decent enough CPU and PSU sitting on my desk now which I can’t really use without the rest of the stuff. I’ll get the mobo and dvdrw next week; which basically means I’ll have everything except for the 7900gt. That only comes in another 2 weeks or so. Pity, seeing as I can’t build my machine without it, as I don’t have any PCI graphics cards. Oh well.

I’m usually pretty loathe to buy from retailers when I look at the markup some of them have. But I got my CPU and PSU from one such “etailer” (Sybaritic) in Joburg. Seeing as I’ve got the dealer pricelists from all the places that they get stock from I can see that their markup is pretty small. It only cost me R80 to get the stuff insured and overnight couriered from Jhb, so that wasn’t too bad. It saved me the trouble of going to the post office (which would have cost me R81 via speedservices anyways).

So… new PC. Not particularly exciting news. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be all: “What now?” sort of thing after I get the stuff, but hey, at least I’ll be able to play some of the current games. I haven’t played any games in years now, and some of the upcoming ones are really looking awesome: Enemy Territory: Quakewars, SiN: Episodes and Supreme Commander, to name but a few for those who haven’t been following.