Which is to say, I swapped modems, and I'm now running at 9600kbps. 9632kbps down, to be precise, and 1024kbps up. Yeah!

I seem to be running on the second oldest version of the firmware for this modem, so I'm going to upgrade it now. That should give me ADSL2+ support and other fun stuff. And if it doesn't work, I have Mister Poopy Modem to fall back on.

Update: 12283/1021. I sacrificed 3kbps of upload for 2651kbps of download. I think I can live with that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:40 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Four Jobs I've Had in My Life

Computer programmer*

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have

Spirited Away
Millennium Actress
The Princess Bride
Ghostbusters

Four Places I Have Lived

Melbourne
Sydney
Um, other places in Sydney

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch

Kamichu!
Gakuen Alice
Galaxy Angel
Futurama

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation

Caloundra
Mt Gambier (possums!)
Whitsunday Islands
Scone

Four Websites I Visit Daily since I got internet access again

JREF Forum
Munuviana
Tim Blair
AnimeSuki

Four Favorite Foods

Heinz Baked Beans in Ham Sauce
Cadbury Roast Almond Chocolate
Special K
Sausage sandwiches

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

Um. I'm in Sydney, Australia; it's summer; I have air conditioning and a 4.5Mbit internet connection. Oh, all right:

San Diego - similar climate, good internet access (and lower latency to munu), and Amazon doesn't charge three times as much for shipping as they do for the product

Four People I Am Tagging With This Meme

Nah.

* Okay, and system analyst, system administrator, network engineer, webmaster, technical support monkey, database administrator; but always just as a distraction from the real job, which is programming. No matter what they hired me for.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:39 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 211 words, total size 2 kb.

Four Jobs I've Had in My Life

Computer programmer*

Four Movies I Could Watch Over and Over, and Have

Spirited Away
Millennium Actress
The Princess Bride
Ghostbusters

Four Places I Have Lived

Melbourne
Sydney
Um, other places in Sydney

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch

Kamichu!
Gakuen Alice
Galaxy Angel
Futurama

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation

Caloundra
Mt Gambier (possums!)
Whitsunday Islands
Scone

Four Websites I Visit Daily since I got internet access again

JREF Forum
Munuviana
Tim Blair
AnimeSuki

Four Favorite Foods

Heinz Baked Beans in Ham Sauce
Cadbury Roast Almond Chocolate
Special K
Sausage sandwiches

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

Um. I'm in Sydney, Australia; it's summer; I have air conditioning and a 4.5Mbit internet connection. Oh, all right:

San Diego - similar climate, good internet access (and lower latency to munu), and Amazon doesn't charge three times as much for shipping as they do for the product

Four People I Am Tagging With This Meme

Nah.

* Okay, and system analyst, system administrator, network engineer, webmaster, technical support monkey, database administrator; but always just as a distraction from the real job, which is programming. No matter what they hired me for.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:39 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 211 words, total size 2 kb.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:37 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Not ADSL 2+.
Not ADSL 2.

This modem doesn't support ADSL 2+ as far as I know, despite the lying weasel "2+" sticker. I tried using it with ADSL 2, and I got a connection at 10.8 Mbps down and 864 kbps up. Sometimes for as long as five or six seconds. Then it dropped out. Many many times.

After a certain amount of fiddling, I forced the modem into standard ADSL mode, and it's now running at 4544 kbps down, 960 kbps up. That's a fair way short of 24 Mbps, but its a lot better than 1500 / 256 that I had before I moved, and a whole lot better than the 64k I've been surviving on since then.

The connection's been stable for half an hour with no packet loss, which is a good sign. I might poke at it a bit to see if it will give me a higher speed - or I might leave it alone for now. Yeah, I think that's a better idea.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:03 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 182 words, total size 1 kb.

Da Goddess has been in touch with Mikey's family from the start, and visited the hospital last night. She's organising things to help Mikey's family out, so check in at her blog and Mikey's for updates.

She writes:

As far as fundraising efforts go, we're compiling a list of needs and I'll be posting that as time goes on. The main item on the list is getting Mrs. Mikey's mom to San Diego. She's in Colorado right now and we need someone to donate miles or a flight voucher for her to get here. If you have the power to arrange this, please let us know!

Mikey is part of our family, and his family needs our support right now, so anything you can do will be appreciated.

Update: Plane ticket taken care of. Mikey's condition has improved; his blood pressure has come down; he's responding to voices and seems to understand what is being said. Not out of the woods yet, but he seems to be on the right road.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 252 words, total size 2 kb.

I do not have 24 Mbps ADSL2+.
I do not have 12 Mbps ADSL2.
I do not, in fact, have ADSL at all.
I do not even have a dial tone, which is the one thing I had achieved.

All phone companies suck. Without exception.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:47 AM | Comments (23) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I'll probably have to get myself a new modem, because my current one only does ADSL 2, not ADSL 2+. So I'd be limited to 12M instead of the full 24. Which would be very sad. But still slightly better than the 64k I've been stuck with for the last five weeks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:20 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Whee!

(If you saw that glitch, then yes, I've been spending too much time on web forums lately.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:37 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.

I went to get a new set, but the only store nearby that had the Koss phones wanted $150. Since I only paid around $80 for the original set, and since they sell for around $35 retail in America, this seemed a bit excessive. Fortunately, I found the Sennheisers, which are nicer looking and more comfortable, distinctly cheaper (at least in Australia), and sound every bit as good.

It took me several minutes to work out how to unpack them, but you only need to do that once.

By the way, even Sennheiser make lousy headphones. These ones? Total rubbish. I don't know why a company like Sennheiser would even want to sell them. I can understand why people would buy them; you've just thrown your old headphones away only to find that replacing them is more expensive than you had expected, but you need something and - oh, those are cheap. Uh, for example. Unfortunately, they're complete crap.

* Apparently, "pretty much trashed" is covered under the warranty, but I didn't know that at the time.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:48 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 222 words, total size 2 kb.

Its a series of videos taken at last year's Skeptics Society conference on, um, brains, minds and consciousness. It's so far covered evolutionary psychology (and why it is wrong), the neural correlates of consciousness (and why idealism is bunk), and where science comes from - and I'm less than a quarter of the way through. It's fascinating stuff and the speakers are wonderful.

It's a three gigabyte download for the "high quality" version (which suffers from some nasty compression artifacts), but that's about eight hours worth of video. Very highly recommended.

While you're waiting for the download, go here and vote for Yuri. This blog is running on Kei, but she's not in the poll.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:23 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 126 words, total size 1 kb.

Melbourne: You have two cows. Since no-one drinks dairy products any more, you enroll them at Moonash University. One graduates and goes on to become head of the ABC's Drama Division. The other becomes front page news when it is killed by a tram.

Adelaide: You have two cows. Their milk is undrinkable, so you apply for a government subsidy and buy expensive imported milk like everyone else.

Byron Bay: You have two cows. Duuuuude.

Darwin: You have two cows. Neither of them gives any milk between September and May. No-one cares.

Perth: You have two cows. The minute they turn sixteen they drop out of school and move to Sydney.

Cairns: You have two cows. You trade one for three baby crocodiles and a one-legged kangaroo, and open a wildlife park. Contrary to expectations, it is a huge success.

Canberra: You have two cows. Together you start a business selling cow-oriented adult movies over the internet. You become rich, and decide to go into politics, where you find that the work is the same but the pay is worse.

(Two cows page via Chapomatic)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:32 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 243 words, total size 2 kb.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:38 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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If you have a Netcomm NB3 ADSL modem, and you have Norton Internet Security installed, you will not be able to configure the modem. Neither the automatic configuration program, nor the manual configuration through your browser will work.

I actually had to get the customer to telnet into modem - fortunately, they were reasonably cluey - before Norton revealed its evil presence and I twigged as to what was going on.

This was, of course, after we sent them a replacement modem.

Die die die! Die Norton die!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:36 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 101 words, total size 1 kb.

Dude, I think you're a dick and all, but in good faith I feel I should point out that you're arguing with Spurwing Plover, who is either a random text generator or 8 years old. We haven't figured out which yet, and he's never gonna answer.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 61 words, total size 1 kb.