We’ve got ourselves a 100% offset account to handle all the mortgage repayments etc. In our internet banking environment this shows up as a cheque account. Lo and behold! Today a chequebook turned up. We haven’t had one of these in about 8 years and have really not missed the cheque facility at all.

Evidence for the prosecution: `OMGWTF Finalist #10: FerronCalc`_. I reckon Keith would agree.

It feels like I’ve spent all bloody day on the phone, with our buyer’s agent, our solicitor, Greg…. Settlement didn’t happen, the hickup which we were advised of late yesterday turned into a roadblock and now we’re waiting to see what happens. Our solicitor and the Bank did the needful from our side (all our ducks were in a row), but there are some legislative requirements which the seller has to meet before settlement can be completed.It’s been a very stressful day. Coming off one of those tossing + turning nights where neither of us slept very much made it that much worse.At least I managed to get some meeting minutes written.

Got an urgent phone call from our solicitor today, saying that there was a hiccup with the settlement plans. It seems that a particular document that the vendor must supply (the bank won’t hand over the cheque without it) has been mislaid, so we’re up in the air.Very, very annoying.

It seems that there are two ways to buy a home these days: search and search and search sites like domain.com.au or realestate.com.au, make heaps of phone calls to agents and place a contract down on properties based purely on the photos from the web…. OR…. engage a buyer’s agent to do it for you.J and I chose the second way, and as of 5pm today the contract to purchase our home-to-be has gone to the Unconditional stage.We’ve got the finances organised, the building and pest inspection was acceptable, our in-person inspection was good, the deposit has been paid and ….. settlement is in mid-June.We’ll be moving about a fortnight afterwards, once J has finished her secondment.

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald there is an article which makes the following claim:

(excerpted)

The Government believes Labor's plan to allow workers to opt out of a
contract if they are unhappy with its conditions would be unconstitutional.
The *Herald* understands the Government has legal advice that allowing
a worker to withdraw from a legally binding workplace contract would breach
constitutional protections on the acquisition of property rights.
If Labor was elected and changed the law to allow workers to opt out of
existing AWAs, the law would be open to a High Court challenge. "If there's
a contract in place, the Government can't make a law that unpicks a
contract without it being challenged," a source said.

To my mind, the implication – that the Howard Government has legalised slavery (workers as property of an employer!) – is outrageous.

Who would willingly vote for such a concept? Not I!

I’m more than happy to have a flexible work relationship, but fairness to both employee and employer as well as goodwill between all affected parties is vital. I do not see WorkChoices (sorry, because the ACTU’s campaign against it has been so effective the Government isn’t calling it that any more) as being fair in any way, shape or form. I’m not automatically on the side of a union, incidentally. There have been letters to the Sydney Morning Herald from employers who have talked about how they approach employment contracts – with fairness and consideration on both sides. That is what we should be aiming for, not the brutalising regime that WorkChoices is forcing on us.

The more I read about the impending APEC summit, the more I despair about the chaos and disruption which John Howard’s desire to strut on the international stage is causing to our country.The latest news, that the US Secret Service will be allowed to carry their own weapons, is a very deliberate slap in the face to our well trained, highly professional and courteous Australian Federal Police, Australian Protective Service and the NSW Police.I predict that the City of Sydney will be a ghost town for the 12 Days of APEC.When business owners and employees are complaining about lost sales, wages and production, just remember that it was John Howard who wanted to host APEC in Sydney rather than our national capital.`Technorati`_ tags: topic:{Technorati}[APEC] topic:{Technorati}[Sydney] topic:{Technorati}[Australia] topic:{Technorati}[John Howard, Prime Minister] topic:{Technorati}[US Secret Service] topic:{Technorati}[Fear] topic:{Technorati}[dog-whistling] topic:{Technorati}[Absolute power corrupts absolutely]

I noticed yesterday via Arjen’s blog that the Call For Papers for the Open Source Developers’ Conference 2007 is now open.Yay!I’ve submitted two proposals – What is a GUID, and why should I care? and `Implementing open standards for hardware: why bother?`_, one of which I hope will be accepted. Well really, I hope both are accepted, but I’m not greedy .. image:: /images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

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Even if the proposals aren’t accepted I’m still going to attend the conference. At AUD300 or so it seems like a very good deal, especially if the sessions are as good as they were at last year’s conference.Given my knowledge and interests both talks have a definite Solaris and OpenSolaris focus — at least for the sample code I’m presenting, but the concepts that I’ll be talking about are applicable to any operating system.If you’re thinking about a proposal for OSDC07, you’ve got until 30 June to get the submission in via the web form.`Technorati`_ tags: topic:{Technorati}[OSDC] topic:{Technorati}[OSDC2007] topic:{Technorati}[OSDC07] topic:{Technorati}[Open Source Developers' Conference] topic:{Technorati}[Brisbane] (Where else but topic:{Technorati}[Queensland]?) topic:{Technorati}[Solaris] topic:{Technorati}[OpenSolaris] topic:{Technorati}[Open Standards] topic:{Technorati}[SCSI] topic:{Technorati}[GUID] topic:{Technorati}[diagnosis] topic:{Technorati}[diagnosability] topic:{Technorati}[triage]

One of the delights of working for a product development engineering organisation is that every now and again the staff get tasked with being guineapigs^W^Wtesting new releases of things such as Solaris Express, Developer Edition.I installed snv_62 on mu ultra20-M2 two weeks ago (yay for LiveUpgrade), but didn’t get around to installing it on the laptop until last week. I did a fresh install on the laptop, fought with the networking control panel for a bit and then went back to using svc:/network/physical:default because I had more pressing work to do than log bugs.That was last week. Yesterday we got a Directive (from a Director, of course .. image:: /images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

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) that we were to install, test and complete a survey on snv_63 or snv_64. One of these (probably snv_64, but don’t quote me) will end up being the next SXDE release. So after making use of some of my download quota I started the installation late last night.Choosing the upgrade install was pretty painless, but I got bitten by these bugs:(existing):6373052 Integrate vfe driver to solaris 116515062 Via Rhine ethernet is still not supported by Solaris {duplicate of 6373052}`6544953 sysidtool application hung in java.lang.Shutdown for x86 if using non-US time zone.`_(new):6555581 please, NWAM, let me know where I am`6555596 Highlander comes to Solaris networking: there can only be one`_6555600 JDS network control panel should hook into an SMF propertyOk, so the last one isn’t a bug but an RFE .. but it’s still an annoyance.Anyway!I got a phone call from John Beck who is the project lead for NWAM wanting to know just what I was blaming. It turns out that NWAM doesn’t have a gui. The gui that you might think is NWAM is in fact a JDS control panel, so if you’re going to log bugs against Solaris networking where your experience is from that control panel……. choose “jds/gnome/applications” rather than “solaris/network/config”.`Technorati`_ tags: topic:{Technorati}[OpenSolaris], topic:{Technorati}[Solaris], topic:{Technorati}[Solaris Express], topic:{Technorati}[Solaris Express, Developer Edition], topic:{Technorati}[NWAM], topic:{Technorati}[NetWork AutoMagic], topic:{Technorati}[JDS], topic:{Technorati}[networking],

Just got an email from Camilla who I used to work with at Sun. Turns out, she’s had a blog for ages and I didn’t have a clue! (“Tell me something we don’t already know” yeah yeah yeah).