440km for 34L = 7.7L/100km
I haven’t seriously ridden my mountain bike since I got back from Asia last year. This is a tremendous shame because I really enjoy riding and my health was really improving as the weight dropped. I hope to get back into it soon.
This photo is from 2007 where I had let my friend Daniel ride my bike down a tricky bit of hill to try it out and when he stopped the bike stood perfectly balanced for around 5 minutes. I managed to take a few photos before it fell over. 
140km to 14L = 10L/100km.
I was getting better economy last year but in my new job my commute is less highway and more gridlock.
The house I moved into had a quite overgrown backyard with lots of lantana that was strangling the trees which had grown rather ugly (and mostly dead) in an attempt to escape the strangling vines.
In an attempt to control my yard I have over the last few weeks gathered an arsenal of backyard weapons including such things as a 4 Stroke Rover lawnmower, a Fiskas saw on a pole and a Ryobi 2000w electric chainsaw.
Believe it or not the electric chainsaw is the stand out item of the bunch and the most surprising. It was extremely cheap (especially compared to the petrol models) and the salesman tried his best to discourage me from buying electric because it wouldn’t be able to do anything bigger than tiny branches.
Oh my was he wrong. It sounds like a circular saw when it gets going and it just munches through dead hardwood branches and stumps like it was cheese! All in all I think it was great value for money but with the rather significant limitation of requiring a powerpoint and would be possibly dangerous to use in the rain.
Now the lantana and dead timber is cleared I just wish I had more things to chop up!
If a tree falls down across my driveway it better be near a powerpoint or a portable generator. 
Well it’s finally all working.
The DSL was took about 30 seconds to setup but I spent about 4 hours working on my Linksys VOIP box before I had all the functionality available to me. I’m pleasantly surprised though to find the calls over VOIP are crystal clear and reliable. Surprisingly the voice quality appears better than PSTN.
I plan to write up a quick guide to iinet VOIP with my Linksys VOIP box soon.
After spending another 25 minutes on hold to iinet last night the support person informed me that he had scheduled for a Telstra technician to correct the ‘fault’ with my connection at 7am this morning.
At 7:30am I tried using my telephone and was disappointed to find it still working so I made breakfast and got ready for work. As I was stepping out the door at 8am a Telstra van pulled into my driveway and he called me on my home phone to say he was commencing work and could he come inside to test the connection inside.
He asked me about this eye eye net thing and is it true it works without having a telephone number. Does this VOIP thing I’ve heard of have a telephone number too? He tested my 2nd telephone port and found the adsl was there. He said he had connected it to that port on the street because he didn’t think I’d want to lose my telephone service and he wasn’t sure how I could have ADSL without a telephone number.
He said it hadn’t been working because there was several missing links between the exchange and my house – if that’s the case I’m not sure what happened when the last technician connected my service. I assumed they’d just have to make the change at the exchange because I already had a working telephone.
I then left for work on my motorcycle and he gave me a call 30 minutes later to say it should be all working when I get home.
It’s been about a month since I went offline. I’m really looking forward to having broadband again!
When I moved house over christmas I left the world of having broadband behind. Unwittingly I stepped into a world of difficulties when I attempted to setup iinet’s new Naked DSL at my new house.
My first two attempts resulted in a “No such service address” which iinet said was a response from Telstra that my house couldn’t have a telephone connection. Given there was two telephone points in the kitchen and there was a ‘connect with optus’ letter in my letterbox I presumed that someone who previously lived there had used a working telephone.
I then decided that rather than fighting with a webpage and long telephone support queues I would submit an application to Telstra to have a telephone line connected. Within a few days a Telstra technician arrived and after a few false attempts at connecting the line it was all working.
I called iinet from my newly working telephone line and arranged for my naked dsl on the new telephone line supplied by Telstra. After waiting 10 working days I received an sms message stating that my connection would be enabled on the 18th of January. I was suffering from a throat infection so I took the day off to rest and be home in case the technician wanted to test the service.
I waited long past the appointed time for the switch-over and nobody ever came. I tested the phone line and found that my Telstra phone line was still working with the same telephone number which confirmed that my naked DSL wasn’t enabled on my line. (If it was enabled I wouldn’t have been able to use the telephone)
On the following Saturday I called iinet to ask what was going on. The Support person said that they had received word from Telstra that the work was all completed and my line tested fine for naked DSL. I explained that I was calling from the phone line that was supposed to be disconnected and he confirmed that the telephone number that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore was displayed on his called ID. The iinet support person said that the only explanation he could draw was that the Telstra tech had connected the wrong line and possibly disconnected someone elses telephone service from the exchange and that he would log a service request with Telstra to correct the error.
On Monday I received an sms from iinet telling me that my Naked DSL and VOIP service was now active, but I was disappointed when getting home to find my PSTN telephone still worked and I couldn’t get ADSL sync.
It seems I’m left in the hands on the Telstra technicians as I don’t have any timeframe of when to expect my connection to be fixed. I get the impression that if I was using Telstra as an ISP they would be much quicker to get me online rather than doing the work on behalf of iinet.
I’ll keep you updated.
I’ve noticed Dell’s new tablet pc has 64GB Solid state storage. If Apple release a subnotebook computer there is a good chance that it’ll also contain this drive.
The question is what does the big banner at the front of the conference “Something is in the air” mean?
It’s been a while since I filled up but I’m still without internet at home so it’s been harder for me to update.
On my last tank I travelled 606km on 30L which is around 4.95L/100km!
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