Monday 5 March, 2012

Kid Free Day

The kids went to day care today so it was quiet at the house.  I spent the day working (as did Sparky) while Rese was gardening.

After lunch, we went down to the lake for a cool off swim.  I had a go on the paddle board, which was difficult, but a fun challenge.  Then I had a go in the surf ski – although it was more of an open kayak for one.  Balance in that was pretty difficult, especially as there was a hole in it, so as it got water in, when ever you paddled, you would lose balance.  With no bung, after tipping it would get even more water in it, compounding the problem.  It was good fun though.

After picking the kids up from day care, I got some more work done, and then went to watch Rese play water polo.  They were short players in the second game and I nearly had to fill in, but didn’t have board shorts on so had to miss out (that, and I doubt I could swim the length of the pool after trying to keep balance on the boards today!).  After that Rese and I went to the pub for dinner with the team – $15 for a steak (decent steak too) and 2 pots!

We stayed at the pub until closing time (so got a few more drinks in), and then ended up at the back of Rese and Sparky’s (following one of the players) and met their new neighbours.  The main waiter and waitress from Saturday night were there too.  After a few drinks we ended up back down the lake for a midnight swim.

Eventually we got home and called it a night.  My big one for the trip, and still on track to not have a hangover on this trip!

Saturday 3 March 2012

Get Me Outta Here!!!

We have had floods in North Eastern Victoria, and it’s rained for most of the week.  So it’s time to go North to my holiday town.  I arrived in Ballina (via Sydney) just before 4.00, to spend some time with Rese and Sparky.  It wasn’t raining, but was very cloudy, and comfortable weather.

We knocked over a couple of drinks, and then went to a charity / fundraiser dinner for the Japanese Tsunami in Lennox.  A babysitter came over to look after the kids, so it was a night we could all enjoy.  We had a 5 course meal that was fantastic.  Tender and moist, mostly local ingredients, and a few Kirin’s to wash it all down.

On the walk back, we pulled in to my old local – The Lennox Hotel.  A band was playing so we listened to them for the duration of a drink, and then thought we should get back to relieve the babysitter.

Tuesday 21 February 2012

Today I was able to finish migrating Sportskeep global to the new servers.  It took a couple of hours for the DNS propagation to occur, but eventually in Melbourne we were able to publish ladders / fixtures / results again.  As we were doing a final test of everything, we discovered that SMSing wasn’t working!  I called the SMS provider and found they were experiencing problems too!  Geezus – we just couldn’t get a break!

Eventually we had done all we could, and it was off to the airport to return home.  Due to unforseen problems (mainly caused by Competitive Edge) I didn’t end up getting to see any of Tasmania while I was there.  But it was still a fun trip.

Monday 20 February 2012

After breakfast, we went back to the stadium, to see how the rest of the night went, and show Josh a few more things.  Part way through the day, the wireless dropped out on me again.  So we replaced the router, hoping that was the problem.

The dramas began mid morning though.  The sportskeep global website had been dropping out for the past 2 weeks, which was quite bad.  I had a phone call from Competitive Edge, telling me it was our fault, and they were suspending our account!  Given I had asked them if it was caused by my scripts a week ago, and they didn’t respond, I was pretty upset at this.  So I had to spend the day trying to set things up on my Dreamhost account, to host Sportskeep global from there.  Unfortunately an error I made there wasn’t “undoable” by me – I needed the sys admins to do it, and they are in the US.  So I was able to prepare a lot of the work but not complete it.

We went out and had a fantastic steak (fillet mignon) for dinner.  Then back at the hotel, I did a bit more work on Sportskeep Express.

Sunday 19 February 2012

We had a full breakfast included in our room rate.  So we enjoyed that to start the day!  We went to Bunnings to get some cable ties and other supplies to help tidy the stadium.  We then spent the morning finishing things off, and the afternoon was spent training Josh on how to use the system.

They had games tonight, so we briefed the umpires and took a seat in the bar.  Everything was running quite well, until 5 minutes before we were going to leave, when the wireless just dropped out!  No idea why.  I spent a bit of time troubleshooting, but once I rebooted the router, it was all going fine.  We then went to Brett’s brothers house for dinner.

There, I saw the ultimate man-cave!  Complete with a ford FPV, bar, etc.  It was a beautiful house!  But after dinner and a couple of drinks we went back to our hotel.

Saturday 18 February 2012

We were woken up at about 5.45, being advised we were getting in to Port soon.  Looking out the window, it was as though we were going up a canal.  We could see houses on the banks of the river!

Once in port, we got in the car and eventually got off, and through security (ensuring we weren’t bringing any fruit in to the state).  Then we were on our way to Hobart – about 3 hours drive.  We stopped and had breakfast on the way.  I worked for most of the trip while Brett drove.

We got to the stadium about 11.30 and got to work.  The setup is getting smoother every stadium we do.  And with the wireless being used instead of having to cable the stadium, it’s even quicker.  Brett’s brother and his son came out and pretty much mounted the TV’s for us, which was a great help.  The old scoreboards had to be moved to the side, but still re-mounted, so not having to worry about that just made it all so much easier.  We had things pretty much finished by 5.00, apart from some tidying up.

We went out for dinner locally, at an Italian restaurant.  Then it was back to the hotel for some more work.

Friday 17 February 2012

This trip was another new place.  Brett and I are on the Spirit of Tasmania, to install Datascore at his stadium at Eastern Shore.

As Brett had been on it before, he knew that the good restaurant gets booked out quite quickly.  So our first job after checking in to our room was to book a table in there.  We had a drink at the back of the boat and watched as we pulled out of Port Melbourne.

After dinner we went back to the bar at the back of the boat with the laptop and the tough book we had just purchased as a demo unit for New Zealand’s “Sportskeep Express” product.  We sat down and re-designed the Player Login screens to work on this unit.  Knowing we would be having an early morning, we went to bed around midnight.