Bundaberg

Well, I'm in Bundaberg today. I've been here for most of the day, and I'm getting close to being finished. One of my customers down here had an important PC blow up, and I had to rush down here.

The Van has got over 4000km on it so far (Rocky and back a couple of times, Townsville once, and Bundaberg today) and it's traveling well. It's a significant bug magnet though, and I'm looking forward to having the Bullbar on it, as I'll be travelling back at night along country roads with potentially a lot of Kangaroos. I'll be careful.

The boys and I installed Quake3 last night, whilst I was building the PC up for here, and while it was installing XP, I had my arse soundly handed to me by Greg. Sigh. I used to be really good at FPS's, but I'm way out of practice.

On the subject of XP, does anyone like Vista? I installed it on Tharyn's parent's new PC, and on Frank's laptop when I gave it to them. They both want it off, and want to go back to XP. Yet another item on my Things-To-Do list.

One of the bad things about the van is that I just tend to chuck stuff in the back of it, treating it like a magic 'Bag of Holding' (those that used to MUD or Roleplay will get that 8), but it isn't infinite in size, and I'm going to have to organise it a bit better. Tharyn bought me some big plastic boxes (about 1m³) a year or so ago, but my 'carry around' stuff has significantly exceeded the carrying capacity of them. I think I might buy a couple more, and re-organise a bit.

I'm thinking out loud here, as the computer I'm working on is busy copying files across, but this is what I think I should have in the van:

• Some CardXpress Printers, as they're the most common 'breakables'
  
• Two reels of Cat5 cable
• My network toolbox, which has all the network terminators and terminating tools in it
• 2 Argent boxes (these are what EFTPOS machines use to talk to the bank, via ISDN)
• 1 Spare LCD Monitor
• 3 or 4 standard PC power supplies
• My 'Box of Components', which has RAM, HDD's, CDROM's, misc bits like that
• Maybe a cheap PC for impulse buys from customers?

That, I think is the important stuff that I should carry around. I think I should be able to pack that into 3 or 4 boxes, and if I can manage to keep it organised, it should give me some more room.

I've also got a new radio in the Van, too - but calling it just a Radio is doing it an injustice. It's a DVD Player, a TV Receiver, a MP3 player (via USB or MP3's burnt to CD) and a bluetooth hands free kit. It's also got a touch screen interface, and it seems to do everything I want it to. The best bit was that it was only $350.

It's astonishing how cheap this stuff is now. I bought it from eBay, and I also fired off an email to the Manufacturer, asking how much their newer and shiner one is - turns out it's only US$310 in bulk. I'm tempted to go into the 'selling car radios' market, as those things would be easily able to sell for AU$699, leaving a nice $200 profit margin there.

The only bad thing about the hands-free, and it's not the radio's fault, is that the van is so noisy. Behind the drivers seat is basically a huge echo chamber for any road or engine noise, and it's quite hard for the other person to hear me. This happened with the Sudio Halo as well, but the Halo was very quiet, and I ended up using it like a mobile phone - putting it against my ear to hear what the other person was saying, which does kind of defeat the purpose of hands-free 8)
I think I may need to put a bulkhead behind the seats, to block out the noise, and to stop stuff flying forwards in an accident

Time to get back to work.