Archive for the 'Online' Category

I upgraded my blog to WordPress v2.0 and took the opportunity to update the design a bit.

Let me know if anything doesn’t work.

WordPress v2.0 has just been released. Like most things in life, this is a double edged sword.

While the new functionality and bug fixes are great – it also means that I have to spend quite a bit of time carefully upgrading all my blogs (and all the blogs I manage for other people!). Unfortunately it is not necessarily an easy upgrade when things like Themes, Plugins and other customisations are taken into account.

*sigh*

A couple of weeks ago when I was in bed with the flu I had an interview for a position in a new team at IBM. I had been waiting for weeks for the interview, so I really didn’t want to reschedule it – especially given how difficult it had been to come up with a mutually agreeable time for the interview.

The challenge was that the interview was over the phone with someone based in Raleigh, North Carolina (on the east coast of the US).

Now, for work related international calls from home, I usually use a dialing prefix carrier override service (Telecorp) and those bills get paid by work. The problem is that the phone line the override is set up on is on a second phone line where the only phone on that line is in the study – and I was in no fit state to get out of bed, walk to the study, sit at my desk, and have a conversation for an hour.

I had my wifi-enabled laptop with me in the bedroom, and I had the cordless phone (our personal phone line). I decided to make the call to the US on my home phone line – because we have Internode’s NodePhone Voice over IP (VoIP) service running over our ADSL link and carrying all our personal calls. I prefer NodePhone over other services such as Skype for most calls because it is completely seamless (you wouldn’t know you are using VoIP – we just use our normal telephones as we always have), and it is carrier-quality … Internode’s network has been specially tuned to ensure that VoIP call data is given priority to ensure clear transmission and high reliability. Works wonderfully well.

I got the bill for that call today. 56 minutes and 45 seconds. AU$2.99

Under $3 for nearly an hour call to the US with a quality as good as a normal phone call. Gotta be happy with that!

I seem to have developed a bad habit of saying “howdy” – both as an online and a face-to-face greeting.

That might be okay if I was from Texas or somewhere similar – but as an Aussie, it’s a very bad habit and one I’ve got to stop myself doing.

Funnily enough, I do also say “g’day” … although I tend to use the more NZ version “gudday”.

Chatting on skype with b5 Jon recently, I greeted him “howdy”, to which he reponded “You sound like a real Calgarian when you say that. We’ll have to make you an honorary cowboy :)” … now THAT is a problem !!

Time to put a stop to this habit right now!

Well, so much for getting organised and making some progress on my to-do list … I got the flu early last week and it basically took me offline for most of the week. I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in bed, mostly sleeping and occasionally surfing (WiFi is wonderful) … but even when I was able to get up, I’ve still got a fuzzy head. I suspect there’s some kind of inner-ear thing happening, and it’s really annoying – stopping me from being productive.

It sucks really – I almost never get the flu, and only get a head cold once a year or so (and usually I only feel really bad for a day or so and I’m completely over it within 7 days). And there’s so much I was hoping to get done by the end of the year. *sigh*

One thing that has happened over the last week is a new project I’m working on – just a sideline thing, nothing terribly major.

I’ve started writing a new blog! (yes, another one!!)

This one is part of the b5media blogging network, and my new blog is called the IBM Eye.

It’s a blog focussed on news, rumours and information about IBM – and not just the Software Group (although there will naturally be a lot of content about that, since it’s where I work).

This new blog won’t take the place of my existing Workplace Channel blog – that’s my technical blog that I run for IBM business partners along with a couple of other colleagues from IBM, while the IBM Eye will be not-so-technical, and more an analysis and opinion blog.

Hope you enjoy the IBM Eye as much as I’m enjoying writing about it!