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Jaycar - Please open a shop in the Hutt!
Consumer electronics (Kitsets and so forth) still exists. But if you went into any store of DSE then you'd be hard pressed to get any assistance.
Just one of those stores in question being DSE Lower Hutt. I thought I'd expand my brain cells a bit with a bit of a project. Problem #1, kitset I wanted not available (that, I could accept). Ordered 2x LED Level Meter Kits from OZ to do the job. Went into DSE Lower Hutt to try to get some LED's (A common component by most standards) and going through all their parts bins only 1 or 2 LED's to be found. Sad. Couldn't find any IC sockets or PCB mounts either. Very Sad. One of the un helpful assistants was raised after waiting for some time with the response being 'try Jaycar in Wellington'.
Sad DSE, very sad. You used to be great, but I will now have to save up my gadget/parts shopping needs for one trip and go to your competitor in Wellington. You've lost a once loyal customer.
So this is my plea.. Please, Plleeeessseeee Jaycar.. open a store in Lower Hutt.
The site of your catalogues causes me to break into joy and dribble with delight over your kits, electronics parts and gadgets!
Couple of Wigram developments.
A couple of articles of note from The Press regarding Wigram in the last couple of days.
The petition which I blogged about a couple of weeks back is in:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/4664487a6530.html
I spoke with Denis and about 3500 signatures were collected over just 10 days and with quite limited distribution, that has to tell you something, imagine the response we'd get over a longer period and with wider distribution. Denis also mentioned he conducted a bit of a survey and the large majority of respondants were in favour of the airfield staying operational.
He has delivered the petition and other information to the council to be heard at the AUgust 28th meeting and is trying to get an audience with a council member sometime before the meeting to further explain the situation.
I think it's quite clear that the people of Christchurch, when actually consulted, are quite against closing Wigram as an operational airfield. Which is why the petition is asking for the Christchurch City Council to simply hold-fire on the plan change which would see a valuable city facility (past, present and future!) destroyed until it consults with the people who elected it.
The second item of interest is that the Air Force Museum has indicated that it will prepare a grass runway on the remaining Air Force land so that the Red Checkers (and helicopters of course) team can perform at airshows, at least until the flight path becomes too crowded with housing.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/4665771a6530.html
If we want to keep Wigram alive, we need to keep up the pressure, please feel free to write (civil) letters to your council members to let them know that you are against the plan change.
Aside: Still no reply from the council members, or Jim Anderton (sitting MP for Wigram) on the letters I wrote to them. I find that to be somewhat unacceptable, especially from the council members. If the Minister of Transport for the entire country can afford to take the time to write a personal reply, you'd think the councillor for an area of a single city could at least say "thanks for the letter".
TelstraClear's Atrocious Support
Today I've had a problem with access NZ sites through my TelstraClear cable connection, including geekzone.co.nz (I'm on 3G at the moment to post this) and even telstraclear.net.nz itself. So I decided I'd better ring the "help" desk and see what the story is. To cut a long story short, I present here a letter I will be sending to TelstraClear.
Update: TelstraClear just called me to inform the issue is fixed and the support person I spoke with last night will be receiving some remedial training.
To whom it may concern, I am writing to make a formal complaint in regards service received during a call to your help desk on the 27th of August 2008 at approximately 7:38pm, lasting 51 minutes.I telephoned regarding an obvious routing issue on the TelstraClear network which made accessing many New Zealand websites inaccessible from my cable mode, including even telstraclear.net.nz itself, I have included traceroutes showing this.
I was on hold for approximately 40 minutes before I finally got to speak to a “technician”. I explained clearly what the problem was giving the ip addresses which were causing the routing issue multiple times.
The “technician” then proceeded to instruct me to “use these DNS servers”. Somewhat surprised at this suggestion, as I thought I had quite clearly described the nature of the problem, I explained to the technician that the problem was nothing to do with DNS and that I was able to resolve the domains in question perfectly, that the issue is a routing issue.
The technician again instructed me to “use these DNS servers”.
I asked the technician if I could email a traceroute to him to check, he replied I could and an email address was given to me.
I duly emailed the traceroute and the “technician” placed me on hold “while he checked something”. When the technician returned he, unfathomably, instructed me to “use these DNS servers”!
I proceeded to tell the technician AGAIN that the problem was nothing to do with DNS and asked him to please look at the traceroute I just sent to the address he specified.
He then told me that he could not look at this only a senior technician could. I asked to be put through to a senior technician, he told me there were no more senior technicians working.
I asked how this could be resolved, he again told me “try these DNS servers”! I told him that this was not the problem. He told me to email my details to that email address to have a senior technician look at the issue.
I asked how long this would take to be looked at, as the issue had now been going on for many hours and I had been on the phone for nearly an hour, most of that time on hold, and the technician had not be any assistance at all. He told me that “probably tomorrow”!
Eventually I became so fed up with the seemingly not-very-technical technician that I hung up in frustration as he was telling me yet again to try changing DNS servers.
As I write this the issue is ongoing, I still can not access www.telstraclear.net let alone other NZ based websites.
This letter is to be copied to www.geekzone.co.nz as I believe it is in the public interest to see what a complete shambles support at TelstraClear has become.
Yours Sincerely, James Sleeman
traceroute to www.stuff.co.nz (202.135.111.130), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.10.1 (192.168.10.1) 0.838 ms 0.981 ms 1.131 ms
2 202-78-155-1.cable.telstraclear.net (202.78.155.1) 33.704 ms 33.791 ms 34.744 ms
3 ge-1-3-0-872-ie1-international.telstraclear.net (218.101.61.169) 22.572 ms 25.879 ms 25.992 ms
4 ae0-843.ie4.telstraclear.net (218.101.61.106) 36.203 ms 36.419 ms 36.308 ms
5 * * *
6 * * *
... 30 * * *
traceroute to www.telstraclear.net.nz (202.78.133.58), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.10.1 (192.168.10.1) 0.849 ms 0.972 ms 1.123 ms
2 202-78-155-1.cable.telstraclear.net (202.78.155.1) 15.570 ms 17.094 ms 17.472 ms
3 ge-1-3-0-872-ie1-international.telstraclear.net (218.101.61.169) 22.618 ms 25.412 ms 25.503 ms
4 * * *
5 * * *
...
30 * * *
Why open source has a hard time in government
I wrote some time ago that open source should be the default decision for any IT manager, director and even individual. Proprietary software - due to its many disadvantages - should only be considered under exceptional circumstances and with a very g... (more in the full post)
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