Bend in the Weather

I attempted to call the Highpoint DodoWorld store yesterday. I was supposed to receive a call the previous week to let me know the status of our return. This never eventuated...

You can't actually call the store... instead you ring head office who then have to put you through. Strange but true. When I asked if I could have the direct number I was politely informed that they can't give me the number and that it can only be given by someone at the store...

I was put through to the store, and spoke to another 'store manager'. (we've spoken to some 3-4 'store managers' now. They are more useless than the staff!) He had no idea, and I was lucky to find the original person we spoke to.
He ummed, erred and generally couldn't recall it. He finally remembered it was a product return after I went through the ordeal with him and he promptly put me on the 'returns guy'.

Simon (our returns guy), turned out to be the only person who actually knows how the process works...
After giving him the details, he quickly brought up the record and sighed.
"Yeah come in tomorrow, I'll swap it over for you", was the response. He also informed me to ask for him by name as no-one else there knows what is going on with returns.

I went in this afternoon... handed over the RA form and 5 minutes later had the replacement card in my hand.

Seems you can get it swapped over, though the general 'DODO' staff don't know it.

Whilst I'll never shop there again due to the poor service we received, it was refreshing to speak to someone who was competent and could actually assist a customer.

Kudos to Simon... you've returned my sanity.

To the other Dodo-World staff... thanks for nothing! This was a 90 minute round-trip I could have done without if you actually were competent!

I'm happy in the end... I now have a working camera in time for the upcoming birthdays!

Pauline's father's 70^th birthday is on Saturday, so at least I'll be able to take a bunch of photos there!

Dodo Internet is a fast growing ISP in Australia.

They have grown quickly do to a couple of reasons:

1. Extremely cheap Dialup Internet
2. Advertise heavily on television, so much so that their name and silly jingle is now a household name.
3. Next to none customer support.

In the ISP field they do quite well.. as the majority only want a relatively simple Internet account.

Recently the company expanded their business into Consumer electronics shores (similar to Harvey Norman, Tandy and Dick Smith). Called DodoWorld one can buy various computer, mobile phones or electronic gadgets from there.

We recently purchased a 256MB Secure Digital Card. The card comes with a 5 year warranty. Generally Sandisk are faultless, unfortunately we weren't so lucky.

We purchased the card for our camera and noticed whilst we were away that it was faulty. As the card went > 200MB in use... it took a long time to save.. It resulted in 'half-photos', and not being able to copy the files off the card.

We purchased it at at DodoWorld at Highpoint so we had to wait until we were heading back out that way. We thought this would be a simple exercise... swap over the card and away we go. How wrong we were!

Under 'Dodo policy' - we can only return a product it it is faulty under 10 business days. That's stated by their website, however in the store in person they will tell you 7 days.

We have basically been forced to hand over our sales receipt to them, fill out a form and told to 'wait'. The wait is due to the fact it has to go back to the manufacturer. That's fair, though it took us 30 mins to have the form filled out.
I claimed I'm disappointed to have a product that I can't use, and told it will 'take about 2 weeks'... Particularly as I have a bunch of birthdays coming up in February where I want to use my camera.

I have a photocopy of the return form, and what gets me is that they insist you sign a form stating that they aren't responsible if they lose it during the process.

The whole process wasn't straightforward, was painful and could be seen that it was not something staff wanted to do.

I find it frustrating that sales staff are quick to want a sale, yet think you are a leper if you ever need to return a product.

What is more frustrating is that the sales staff member left a note for the store manager to call me regarding the return . HE was supposed to call on Monday. It's now Wednesday and I'm still yet to get a call. This strengthens the belief that they can't be bothered dealing with me as a customer post-sale.

Ohh... and for the record. A Dodo was a flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius. They became extinct in the 1700's. The main reason for their extinction is due to the fact they were not afraid of the humans that hunted them!
Dodo took its name from the Portuguese word for "fool".

So basically they have called their stores 'Fool's World'. I certainly feel like one since shopping there, and after this experience it is likely I will never shop their again.

I recommend all readers to consider twice prior to shopping there... particularly if you would like some after-sales support.

It will be interesting what becomes of this all. I'll keep you informed.

As mentioned previously I was going to inform you all how to create your own Windows XP Service Pack 2 installation CD.

This takes your original Windows XP CD and integrates the latest service pack into your Windows CD.
Doing so ensures you don't need to apply either Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 after you complete the Windows install.. as it's already part of it! This will save you countless hours of downloading and upgrading as a result.

The process I followed is documented here. It's well worth taking the time to create your own slip-streamed CD and you'll be thankful the next time you need to reinstall Windows (we all need to at some stage!)

Whilst this will bring you up to date with Windows XP, it doesn't mean you'll have all the critical updates available from either the Windows Update or Microsoft Update website.

You'll find that even though you have got a Windows XP SP2 machine, there is some 250MB of updates still to go!

There are a few methods to speed this up.

1. Download each update individually and create your own 'Updates CD'.
2. Use the Windows Update or Microsoft Update site and manually do it.
3. Use an automated tool.

I have gone with Option #1... but I know what I'm doing. For everyone else... I would recommend Option #3.

A great tool is available called AutoPatcher. It basically grabs all the patches and applies them in one swoop without user intervention.

AutoPatcher updates monthly... so it's easy to keep on top of it.

You can learn more by reading through the AutoPatcher forum and FAQs

So happy patching and slip-streaming!
Let me know how you all get on.

What a day!
I headed down to Geelong first up to pickup our new coffee machine. Pauline stayed home as we were expecting the delivery of John's (her brother) replacement machine to turn up, and she was going to build it.

So off I headed... on a very nice, extremely hot and windy day!

I Emailed the buyer late last night to say I was coming tomorrow (hence Friday) but as he didn't read it til Friday morning he understood it as Saturday!


I just rang Pauline to tell her it was a no-go after knocking on the door 3-4 times (in case they were out the back) when they pulled up in the car! I managed to pickup the item as a result.

I dropped by my folks on the way home just to say howdy. Didn't stay too long as I needed to get cracking on John's new machine.

By the time I arrived home, Pauline was putting the finishing touches to the machine.

It was over to me to install the OS, drivers and patches.

I tried our original version of XP with John's CD-Key... no go.. couldn't find the SATA hard-disk. No drama... put them on a USBKey and read them. Windows picks up the drivers lists them, but can't install them (for some brain-dead reason they need to be on Drive A:).
The problem was... we didn't have a floppy drive in the machine.

After many hours of trying various options.. even Slip-streaming Windows XP Service Pack 2 into the CD... we still couldn't get it going. (More of SlipStreaming tomorrow!)

Pauline scrounged around and found a spare floppy drive.. so we stuck that in. That's when the fun began... sometimes we would see the drivers to select, then they would refuse to install, sometimes we couldn't see them at all. After several hours of mucking around... we ditched that floppy drive and stuck in another.
Worked first go! Seems the first floppy drive was faulty.

It took about some 4 hours.. but I was finally able to start the Windows install.

Lesson: Always have a floppy in a machine... no matter how little you use it. It's bound to be required when you don't have one.

The good thing is that I had Service Pack 2 on the install CD.. which saved me installing that seperately.
I added Office 2003 to the build and then applied the Office 2003 Service Pack 2 Updates to the Office build (I had them on CD).

Now... Windows Update... It seems our newly build machine needed some 39 critical updates for Windows and 4 for Office!

I got a bit smart then... instead of just downloading them... I took note of their KnowledgeBase numbers and downloaded the lot from the Microsoft Download site.

This will mean in future when I build another machine, I can just use these instead of wading through Windows Update and chewing up my valuable download quota!

Some 250MB worth of updates later and it's fully patched!

I've now burnt a DVD-RW with all the updates one needs to bring a SP2 machine upto a fully patched state as of 20/01/2006.

Now... to learn to automate applying them directly after SP2 and it should really cut down the time to deploy a machine. (I know with some of the automation tasks for admins this is possible... just never needed to do it!)

John's machine is now ready and raring to go! I think we'll probably drop it over on Sunday for him if he's free.

As for the coffee machine, it comes with a coffee grinder so we can bu real beans and grind them. Pauline's still playing, but we've had a few coffees already and it's quite good! It's much quieter than our last machine, though it seems to take a little longer to heat the water. All in all it was really cheap and ensures Pauline's able to make her froth again (our frother was broken on the old one... and they wanted $60 to look at it).
It's worked out not much dearer buying a new one.. that includes a coffee grinder. Talk about a throw-away society!

Yesterday Pauline and I went in search of a lawn edger.

We have buffalo grass that loves to creep over anything.

We thought we could get a petrol lawn edger for ~$200-$250. Seems we were quite wrong!

The Atom apparantly is 'the best'. Everywhere we went people recommended the Atom. It's an Aussie invention and has patents world-wide. Whilst it's the best it's also one of the cheapest and most reliable.

If you've never seen one before they do look weird! It's like a wheel-barrow with 1 wheel and two handles that you use to push it along. The others brands (and more expensive) work like a lawn mower with a blade sticking at right-angles to the ground. These 3-wheelers however are not the easiest when cutting around curves (which our footpath has a lot of!)

We rang around and visited a bunch of mower shops yesterday in the vain hope that we could get a cheaper edger. There were attachments that fit onto whipper-snippers however everyone cautioned against them for two reasons.
1. Not easy to use.. and gives you back-ache after some time using them.
2. Are notorious for breaking down.

We found that the 2-stroke Atom retails for $429.00 though we located a store in Essendon that will do it for $399.00 with next day delivery.

It's a lot of money.. and whilst it will make life much easier we have to weight up if we really need it.

Currently I use a whipper snipper, but find it's a slow and painful job. I normally find it takes 45-60 minutes to do, and the job is not a clean, straight cut. I also use a lot of whipper-snipper reel and the buffalo grass isn't the easiest to get through. There is some areas I just can't get through at present.

If we do get it ... it will be my birthday pressie. Though I'm wary of spending so much money on it.

Pauline was up early today and headed out to go shopping with her Mum. That left me and the wide spaces of the house alone!

I started working on the project I mentioned yesterday, and did pretty well on that front.

At 2:15pm I picked up a bit of a bargain on Ebay. Our coffee machine has busted as the frother hasn't been working.. so I picked up this Coffee machine instead!

That will make Pauline happy... as she misses her frothy coffee!

I then got a call from Pauline, to say she rang into a person yelling 'Excuse me' rather rudely.
She was about to tell them off, when she turned around and saw it was her sister!
She had run into Christine, Vanessa and Mitchell. They were there with a friends doing some shopping. So they sat down, caught up and had a coffee. (This coffee is becoming a theme).

Pauline arrived home around 4:30pm from shopping (I really don't know what secret business women do when shopping!)
Pauline had just finished unpacking when the phone rang. It was Merrilyn. (Her soon to be sister-in-law). The two chatted for a while and we invited ourselves over there for dinner.

So we bundled into the car, grabbed a nice bottle of red (Banrock Station Chrimson Red Cabernet - one we bought back from Stanley Winery from our recent Mildura holiday) and headed over there.
I 'supervised' John rewiring a car for a few hours, whilst the girls caught up and drank coffee (more of that coffee thing).

We ordered in take-away and had a good yak. The girls had chicken parma whilst John and I had a pizza.

The chilled red went down lovely and we were all looking at an empty bottle soon... John cracked open a bottle (only a lovely 2003 'Red label' Wolf Blass Cab Sav) and we took a dash from that... by then Pauline had moved on to Jim Bean and Dry.

Finally we were thrown out around 11:30pm and headed home.

All in all... quite a good day!

It's been a week since my last blog entry!

Since that time I've been enjoying the rest. I haven't started looking at present for another role but will commence with that as of tomorrow.
I'm not too concerned, as it's traditionally a quiet month and December was very hectic so it's likely that February will also do well.

The role at Coles-Myer didn't eventuate... though that's not such a bad thing.

What have I been doing in the interim? Well enjoying life... have watched some of the cricket, and much of the tennis (for those that don't know the Australian Tennis Open is on in Melbourne ... so it means we get to watch it in prime-time.

I've also been doing some work on my brother-in-law's notebook to ready it for Internet use (It didn't have any patches and have never stepped near the Internet). Why?! His desktop has died so we ordered him a new one, so his notebook (normally used for tuning his cars) was rushed into commission.

A day and a half later it was right to go! That's what happens when you have numerous updates, service packs and the like to go on a PII-300 running WinXP!

Not much else to report... will be doing some website coding for some new stuff released later this month. More news as it comes along.

We'll it's official.
I'm now finished at Telstra.

It was fun, if not a little frustrating at times with the process.

I must admit though, the people I met at Telstra were fantastic! I'm hoping to stay in touch with a bunch of them.

My team took me out to a Malaysian restaurant for lunch. It was great to say good-bye to them all.

I imagine if the timing was better and Sol and Co had finished all the restructure it would have been different. At present, nothing is really moving, and hence no contracts are being renewed.

Also with the rumoured 20% of staff across the board going, it's unlikely that they will keep on a lowly contractor!

I'm not stressed... the market is good and offers are starting to come in. I'll start looking at these and imagine it won't be too long until I'm hanging my hat elsewhere.

Currently ColesMyer have a give drive for techs, and it appears they have a number of Linux Admin roles.. so I could end up there!

Time will tell...

Today's the first day back at work.

Not to worry... the holiday had to come to an end eventually... though a few extra weeks would have been nice.

My contract finished tomorrow... so I'll be back on leave from Wednesday!
Due to the current situation here ... I'm unlikely to be renewed... everything is topsy-turvey, though I'm not too concerned as the market is pretty good and job offers are already coming in.

I've got a heap of things I wish to do with the business and around the home that will keep me busy for the next few weeks... and I will probably head away with Pauline for a few days (particularly whilst it's still summer and we have such good weather at the moment!)

It is strange coming back to work for only two days though...

This is the last post on our holiday.

I thought we would at least post some pics on what the place looked like that we stayed at!

We stayed at the Quality Resort Rockford in Mildura. Recently refurbished, it's quite modern and very relaxing!



For those considering going to Mildura I would highly recommend the place. We stayed in one of the corporate rooms and were lucky to pick it up for half price by booking through WotIf

I would say I got sunburnt the day we played tennis. As we were out there for a while! Ahh well... the exercise did us well.


Those that know me know that I enjoy my wine. I had let our stocks run down a little so was looking forward to visiting some of the local wineries around Mildura to replenish the stocks.

We took in 3 wineries whilst we were away. Stanley Winery (part of the Hardy Wine Company), Trentham Estate Winery and Lindermans Karadoc Winery. We purchased a mixed dozen at each so we'll have plenty of wine for quite a while now. Each winery has some excellent wines.
If you're interested in what we went with (both white and red) let me know.. I'm happy to give you details.. We even picked up some excellent 'summer reds' that you serve chilled. Very refreshing on a hot summer's day!

To get to the Trentham Winery we passed through the town of GolGol, a small town on the Murray just outside of Mildura. We stopped and took a photo as it was so picturesque.


As we visited Lindermans on the way home we passed through Red Cliffs (just south of Mildura). Red Cliff's claim to fame is that 'Big Lizzie' resides here.



Built in 1914-1915 in Richmond, it was intended to go upto Broken Hill to cart wool from the outback stations. It however could not cross the Murray at the time which was in flood.

In 1920 the Victorian Government hired it to uproot trees and clear some 1500ha of land around what is now Red Cliffs.

After Red Cliffs and Lindemans... it was back to Melbourne via the Calder Freeway. The return of Melbourne highlighted the end of the holiday. We had such a good time we didn't want it to end!

I'll take some shots of all the different wines we brought back and post it up later in the week.