Posts by Paul Campbell
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I've decided to start a CiR too - mine will simply be "Have you stopped beating your children yet"
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This is a university town - we allow books at tables, even in pubs .....
Truth be told we're at a size now where we probably have to book - we decided we were too big even for the newly expanded Inch bar .... -
it's been full of flames for as long as I've known it (1985ish) and hasn't burned down yet
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Duncan - I do understand and appreciate the situation you're in - it's why I haven't just upped and moved on just yet - I do worry that people who are in your already unbundled areas (ahem Russell ahem) don't appreciate that cabinets are effectively shutting many of the rest of us from possibly ever getting access to VDSL/etc goodness - without jumping ship that is
On the other hand I also understand you have capital issues expanding VDSL to the entire country at once - I'm sure it's why you've cherry picked inner Auckland/Wellington - I suspect that cabinetisation makes that harder for you too since it means scattering your gear all over town following your customers - none of the economies of scale that might come with a rack in a central exchange - but equally it means it costs you the same now to install a DSLAM in my local cabinet as it will in a cabinet in central Auckland - no reason not to spread the goodness to the rest of us
Personally I don't mind paying for a new DSLAM at my end as part of an upgrade since the cost is going to be vaguely equivalent to the new dsl modem I'll need anyway (hey - sell me both cheap in an upgrade package!)
BTW - I didn't mean to pick on Orcon it's just that you are my ISP ...
And of course all this is a step along the way, I'll be standing on the street corner with a shovel when the fibre finally comes by, please reserve me a few dark ones for the future
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Speaking of broadband I've been trying to figure out where to jump next - the problem here in Dunedin is that we've been cabinetised ... all the dslams are in the neighbourhoods now (or at least are in mine) - that means that my ISP Orcon wont ever get around to installing their equipment in my local telephone exchange - no 25mbps for me
Locally at least it appears that Telecom has snookered all the other ISPs - sure they've split into bits but given the commerce commission's recent ruling no one can compete with them now that they've forced us into cabinets.
Orcon's been quite rightly crying 'foul' - but, they've also shown little enthusiasm to move faster broadband out of their cherry-picked markets in central Auckland and Wellington - unless something changes soon I may be faced with holding my nose and, despite my past bad experiences, moving to Telecom
I tried to get any sort of indication out of Orcon on the phone and by email this week - didn't really get an answer that helped much - I want some competition here - I throw $1500 a year in this direction who wants to make the best offer?
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Makes me thing of things we played over and over again to our kids in the car - "Locomotive Breath", "Lazy", "Another brick in the wall" (from the helicopter flyover with the sound turned all the way up), probably all of "Dark side of the moon", "Fly like a eagle" .....
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Yes was part of my teenage years - but somewhere there (maybe between the punk and the ska) it got boring - I still remember them fondly but can't last more than 5 minutes listening to them.
I have this theory about listening to music you really like - basically you only get to listen to something a fixed number of times before your brain becomes accustomed to it and whatever it was that really made you love it no longer thrills you - and I think it works whether you're listening intently or just playing it in the background while you work - this means you have to save those somgs/albums you really really like for when you have quality time for them.
Having said that I don't think I listened to Yes that much.
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that's called "triage" - and yes we need our medical professionals able to decide "this person can't wait" - I think the big problem with waiting lists is that for some people it means an infinite wait (for some small value of infinity that's too long) - really we need someone managing the other end of the list too - maybe simply a web page where I can check to see where I'm on the list and how it's progressing forward would be a start
Waiting lists are a good thing - if we didn't have waiting lists we'd have expensive people and machines sitting there available for us day and night - much more expensive - the lists allow us to smooth out the demand to keep the resources we have being used cost effectively - that works for lists just long enough to fill in the peeks and valleys of demand - anything else will just grow for ever ....
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Islander - these days gall bladder surgery is easy - they used to open up your entire stomach wall and you'd spend a month recovering. These days they go thru your navel - I walked home the day after I had mine out.
The pain when you have gall stones and have an attack is what's evil - a lot like what Russell describes he went through - but every other night until you figure out it's fats that trigger it (one person in Wanaka who gave me a full fat latte when I asked for trim is still on my shit list .... I got a night of agony from that) - compared to one night of that pain the surgery and recovering from it was easy.
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I know that all-the-muscles-are-clenched back pain agony - I had undiagnosed gall stones for a year - used to kick in at 2am without warning every week or so - people who've had both tell me it's the same as "back labour".
The US medical system is great at putting you off - insurance companies don't want you to see specialists, they cost money - eventually I got to sit down at the ultra sound place with all the pregnant women - all of them looking at me with that "why aren't you in there with her" look on their faces - once I was diagnosed things started to move - it was out in 3 days.
My wife came down with the same thing last year - here in NZ she was diagnosed in a couple of weeks - and was put on a long long, might never end, waiting list - we ponied up the full cost of paying to get it done privately - I don't wish that pain on anyone.
On a separate issue - I was talking to my teenage daughter about alcohol and OTC pain meds - there does seem to be a lot of ignorance if this in the real world - your liver/kidneys can only process certain amounts of toxins at a time - too much and you cause damage - tylenol/panadol/acetaminophen in particular doesn't like to share - they really mean it when they say don't take to many and don't take it with alcohol or of you regularly drink a lot - also check what else you're taking - night time fever meds and other things like vicodin can also contain large amounts of it. People who try and off themselves with high doses of acetaminophen don't don't drift away quietly the way they expect - instead they sometimes suffer a long painful death from a malfunctioning liver ....