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.

Vito Damage! Oh no..

Luckily, not OUR Vito, but Pat and Ceds.. It hit a kangaroo last night. D'oh.

Inverter Arrived..

I ordered the inverter for the Vito on Thursday of last week, and they said it would ship on that day or Friday. I gave it a couple of days slack and called them today - Wednesday. He gave me all the tracking numbers, and before I'd even finished writing them down, there was a knock at the door. There it was. I rang back and told them, they thought it was amusing too 8)

It's actually different to the one in the photo linked above. This has 4 Seven-Segment displays (you know, the '8' that lights up to display different numbers) and a button so you can see how much current it's using, the internal temperature, input voltage, output voltage, and other funky things.

The only downside is that it's big. REALLY big. I didn't actually pay too much attention to the dimensions when I ordered it, but the website says "120mm X 270mm X 530mm" Yeah, I should have looked at that 8-\ Almost half a meter long. I'm not sure where I'm going to be able to mount it, but I'm sure we'll figure it out. It SHOULD fit underneath one of the seats.

The things I want in the Vito are, in order of importance:

• 240v (Inverter, Organised)
• UHF Radio (TX4300, Organised to be installed on Friday)
• Second Battery (Would be nice, especially if I start doing lots of work IN the van)
• USB Ports to charge stuff (Car Computer, will organise that later)
• Some sort of Work Area (a bench that swings down from the wall, possibly?)
• HF Radio (Barrett 950, which I already have, but needs some parts replaced)

The Barrett is actually one of the worlds best HF radios. Extraordinarly good, ludicrously expensive, and it's been sitting in the garage for almost 4 years now. It'll sit quite nicely on the bullbar when that gets installed, in 3 weeks or so.

The bad news about this is that there's a going to be a lot of current draw that could be happening, which is why the second battery (or possibly even 2 batteries) is going to be required. The Inverter can pump out almost 10A at 240v - but to do that will require a draw of 250A at 12v. The cable I need to run from the battery to the inverter and not suffer from current drops or, really more serously, fires, is what's called AWG #2/0 - which is almost 2cm in diameter. That's a big bastard thick table. The HF radio isn't so bad, but it will still need AWG #0 cable, which is about 1cm in diameter.

The important point is, is that whereever the batteries are, that's where the inverter and HF radio's going to be.

Now, Tharyn's going to be reading this going 'Why the smeg did I let him have posting access to my blog?'... Well. I dunno either baby 8)

--Rob

New Car day - Hopefully

If all things go to plan, we'll be picking up the new Vito this afternoon. It doesn't have the side windows or the bullbar on yet, because DC Motors are having problems getting them. It does have the cruise control, which is reasonably important. I like not getting speeding tickets.

I've been thinking about where to put all the 'geek' stuff, and I think I've decided that Tharyn's idea was the best (as usual). There's a reasonably large gap between the two front seats, which is designed to let you have access to the storage area without getting out of the van. If I get a decent box built there, I can use it to keep all the geek gear in - the inverter, radios, 2nd battery, etc. I'm not sure if I want the 2nd battery up the front though. I'll have to have a think about saftey and mounting etc.

If I build a decent enough size box, I can stick a Car PC in there too - we've got enough bits lying around that it wouldn't actually cost us anything, and if I stick a decent sized hard drive and a WRT54G in there, I could connect to the file server at home from in the driveway and update my MP3's in the car.

All I'd need then is a monitor of some sort in there. I could put one on an arm, I guess, so that passengers could watch vids whilst travelling, and if we get it mounted correctly, it could swing around to act as entertainment whilst having a kip in the back. I'll look into that. Also, having a proper supply of USB power would be handy. Pretty much everything charges of USB these days.

Dropped jade off at daycare this morning. Second time (and second day in a row) that she didn't have a tanty when I left. Yay!

Vito.....

Ok, so Rob's been talking about getting a caravan to do all of the travelling that he wants to do around Australia installing various CardXpress machines.... I had to find a cheaper and smarter alternative...

So, we considered the Mercedes Vito that my parents own... and then started looking at various other vans... Unfortunately, no one makes a decent looking van except for Mercedes...

When Rob was in Rocky on Wednesday installing another machine, the local Merc dealership had a 2006 Vito still on their lot... so they were desperate to sell it... Firstly offering it to us for $47,000.... which was quickly dropped to $42,000 when we said that Redbook didn't even have them listed with an RRP that high.

We said we'd consider it and get back to them... we didn't get back to them soon enough... and on Friday morning - they phoned and offered it to us for $40,000... Rob said that it was still not really good enough for a base model van...

So, we got it from them for $40,500 - including installation of: Cruise Control ($550), windows in the sliding doors ($1,000) and a bull bar ($1300) (hopper knocker... which is important given that Rob's probably hit at least 15 in the Prado... and the hopper knocker has saved the car every time....) So we really managed to get them down to $38,000 for the BASE....

So, Rob's quite pleased with himself.... and I'll finally get my Prado back :) (I managed to have it for about the first month of it's life before it got stolen permanently...)