MCQP is here tomorrow

My costume rentals have been going crazy the last couple of days and weeks, due to Mother City Queer Project (MCQP) happening tomorrow. If I get some quiet time tomorrow during the day, then I will get a ticket myself to go there for the first time. If I go there, some of my clients will know how I look like, most will not know. It was difficult to actually still have a costume available for myself, so now I am going with a choice which I wasn't actually expecting and which nobody else wanted unless they were desperate.

Computer virus infestations

A few weeks ago, my PC was infested by two different computer viruses about one week apart. I am not sure if both were present at the same time. One virus blocked all outgoing network traffic to prevent the downloading of virus scanners (I got around that by sending a scanner to it), the other one corrupted every windows executable file on my all of drives. The only thing that wasn't affected was the game Guild Wars, because the auto-update system overwrote its own executable with a new version. That virus was W32/Tenga.A

Spam filters

A recent problem that has been showing up on my costume renting website is some automated spam on the enquiry form. This is happening to a lot of my clients as well. The result is a generic spam filter that checks for specific things to at least block the main bulk of the automated junk.

Geyser nearly burst

Yesterday when I got home from work, I had the fun that the geyser nearly blew apart, it was already leaking at various seams due to hot water and air pressure. Parts of it were shaking. I just love these unforseen expenses.

Charity event in Kraaifontein

This Saturday, I will be assisting at a charity event sponsored by the N1 City hospital. The event will take place on Saturday. I am scheduled to be there at 14:00 in my Spider-Man costume to help hand out party packs to children.

Electrical issues weekend

This last weekend was problems in regards to electricity and electrical devices:

On Saturday night when I returned from a friend's place, the electricity was off. I suspected that the pre-paid electricity has not been paid and went to bed.
On Sunday, when I got up sometimes between 10AM and 11AM, I heard there was somebody in the yard who did some electrical work, so I knew it wasn't the lack of pre-paid electricity, but it could have been the geyser going faulty again.

When I checked how many pre-paid units there were, I discovered a new pre-paid meter in place of the usual one. That explained some electrical problems from the past.

In the afternoon, I got networking issues. In the evening, my Switch (Switching Hub) seems to have died. Today I am testing it at work to see if it is faulty, or if it is a faulty network card or cable.

Guild Wars: Travelling and mapping

Last night, I was planning on mapping some areas in Tyria with a Factions character. As I started, there was a necromancer who was looking for other travellers to come along. We actually started in Wilds and around midnight went all the way through to Sanctum Cay and on to the Oasis.

There were some other people that occasionally came along and some fading on us because they wanted to just run through and kill themselves. Doing all of that work to map was lots of fun, and I collected 4K gold which means four more primary skills at 1K gold each.

The end result of the story wa having lots of fun, meeting new people doing missions together, mapping (to get that 60% title) and earning rewards from the effort. The cheapskates don't get that.

Huge traffic jam in Cape Town due to fire

Early on Monday, 2 October 2006 there was a nasty fire underneath the N7 bridge next to the railway line in an informal settlement due to some gas tank causing tremendous heat. As a result, the N7 was blocked off due to the danger of the bridge collapsing. Traffic was rerouted through various roads and there was and still is a daily huge traffic jam all around the area during peak hours. The railway line seems very much unaffected by this.

All kinds of things

The last couple of weeks have been quite busy.

Recently, I got an ADSL connection finally. As long as I mostly use it for internet and keep an eye on the traffic, my monthly phone bill should settle down a bit, since it is based on usage and not time. As a result, I could now meet with several people while playing Guild Wars.

This evening is the farewell party of a colleague.

The birthdays of my father and sister are coming up soon. The week after that is the birthday of another friend of mine.

On the 21st October 2006, I will be in my Spider-man suit at a charity event for roughly half an hour. Hopefully the temperature won't be too hot.

Due to some training excercise on Monday with weights at the gym, my arm and shoulder muscles are sore and partially numb. Yesterday was quite bad in regards to the pain.

New costume booking system gone live

After going live with my newly developed costume booking system, I ran into some glitches which needed fixing. The live server was a bit different than my local server. Somebody already used the booking form for a costume and booked one costume for an entire month. Last night, I did an update to enable the end date on the booking form and the displaying of the bookings now includes the end date. There are still other issues that need to be fixed, but as it is now, the system is running and in use.

The booking system is the biggest headache, since time needs to be calculated for at least three days per costume, and overlapping dates would cause a problem. The minimum three days comes from a costume being picked up one day, then being used the next day, and usually brought back the day after that. Some people cannot return costumes on Sunday, so they come on Monday, which makes that four days. Once a costume has been returned, it needs to be washed which can be up to two days, or if there is a long washing machine waiting queue, it might take a few days longer to be ready.

Repairs are of course an annoyance, expense and time delay. There is usually no fixed time how long that could take.

Costume renting website updates

On Saturday morning, I have finalyl uploaded my updated costume renting website for my home business. Some strange things happened with part of the navigation where I least expected a problem. The data seems fine, but the navigation doesn't generate. The booking system also caused some weird problems which I could fix.

As I get time over the next couple of days, I will add several masks with photos to the site. After somebody came on Sunday to return 13 costumes, I took many photos with my webcam of all of the different masks that I have. Editing the photos will still take a while, as well as updating the website with the new details.

Yesterday, I was supposed to pick up one new costume, but the lady that was creating it ended up in hospital, so I never got to meet her. Hopefully I can get that costume today or tomorrow, since I need it this coming weekend to perform at a children's birthday party. Tha should be an interesting experience.

Last weekend was a charity event and a world record breaking event in one. I was there as a sponsor, participant and staff member. As staff, I walked around in a tight fitting Spider-Man suit for several hours. The amount of attention from the public is quite a bit, for that that was just some joke. After that weekend, when I was at the local gym, I thought that I get a lot less attention when walking around in the dressing room with hardly any or no clothes on, than walking in a full body covering suit in a public area.

Today, I got an email from a friend of mine from Taiwan back from the days of my last year of school (1995). Before coming to work today, somebody reversed his car into mine with hardly any damage. I also went past Readers Den to pick up my subscription that has arrived. The people there mentioned to me the new date of Free Comic Book Day which is going to be taking place on 5 May 2007.

I made a mistake yesterday

Yesterday, somebody sent a person to pick up a costume which was apparently booked but not marked on my website as being booked. The costume was out at the time, because it wasn't previously marked so that I could rent it out to whoever wanted it. Apparently this person phoned me sometime last week, but I could not remember the telephone call at all. I do get a lot of phone calls on a daily basis while I am working at the time. A telephone conversation from one week ago is ancient history what me concerns, since there have been so many things happening since then. A reminder beginning of the week would have been good, or an email, so that I can mark the costume on my website as booked and for which date. Normally I check through my emails on a daily basis and do this processing, so that things like yesterday do not happen.

To whoever got disappointed last night, as I said to you one the telephone: I do apologise for what has happened.

On another note: There are a couple of cases when people book costumes, by either email, telephone or coming in person and then I never hear from them again. At some poitn in time, when a specific costume is requested by multiple people, and I haven't heard from those people for a long time, I have to make a decision if I will allow it to be rented out, when time is running out. In many cases, the people who book costumes do not want to leave contact details, and I cannot always chase everybody either.

78 hours world record spinning event

For four days this last weekend (18 to 21 August 2006), a charity/fund raiser spinning event took place upstairs at N1 City in Cape Town (South Africa).

If officially recognised, the event will be the new Guinness World Record for spinning (two people alternating). The last record was 72 hours and 15 minutes. This new one is at 92 hours (if officially recognised).

I was one of the sponsors, I took part in the spinning (more than one hour), and I helped out at the event as well (dressed in my Spider-Man suit and posing for photos).

After spending four days for several hours at that event, and most of those in costume, I have had enough. The constant attention by everybody is tiring. I had a chat with lots of people. Some were sponsors, some were participants and some just spectators.

After going to my gym (Planet Fitness was one of the sponsors), I realised, that it is easier to walk with hardly any clothing on through the dressing room to the showers, than it is to walk in a public place in a noticeable costume. I was really glad, that I had a mask on.

The three weeks before this event, I was in that same suit downstairs at Mugg & Bean every Saturday for five to six hours. Those Saturdays were there to lead up to the event, and to do some fundraising for the six year old Leukaemia patient. Mugg and Bean was a big sponsor of the event.

Another crazy weekend coming up

This coming weekend is going to be yet another crazy one when it comes to superhero costumes being rented. From the 18th of August 2006 until the 21st is a major event at N1 city, where a couple of my costumes are going to be used. The entire event is a charity event where a Guiness World record in spinning is supposed to be broken. I will be there doing random appearances in various costumes. The last couple of weekends, I was already at N1 City in my Spider-Man suit.

Today, my phone has been going crazy when several people were asking for superhero costumes for this weekend. Yesterday there were several enquiries from Johannesburg by phone and email. Some superhero costumes have already been booked, and I am expecting a wild rush coming on. My costume rental home business is busy this month.

What makes this weekend even more crazy, is that I am randomly not at home, I am also visiting friends and have to pick up some, due to work related issues. That event is taking up my time, I have to go shopping on Saturday and be at that event. Saturday afternoon I am visiting a friend. Sunday I am expecting costumes to be returned.

Costume renting and many charity events in costume on weekends

The amounts of costumes being rented from me has been picking up lately. Partially this could be due to my advertising in the home ads, as well as becoming better known by word of mouth and getting referrers from companies where I refer other people to if I don't have a costume that people are looking for.

This coming Saturday, I will be in my Spider-Man costume at N1 City near the Mug & Bean. N1 City is right next to the N1 highway in the Cape Town area, in the greater suburb of Goodwood. I am booked for the same kind of event until and including 19 August 2006. For me that means busy Saturdays, meeting lots of people, posing for photos, getting into odd situations when changing in and out of costume, networking with people that I meet and possibly a boost in business from all of that. Most likely my 120 business cards will not be enough until the 19th.

On 5 August, the costume party of the German Carnival Matieka is also coming up. Lately, I just did not have much time to actually think about that and what costume to wear for the event. The last couple of years, I have tried superhero costumes, I might use a Star Wars costume this year.

Non-profit event at Planet Fitness gym

On Saturday, I took part as staff at a non-profit charity event. My primary purpose there was to show up as a costumed character to entertain the people there a bit and sometimes help out with handing out prizes. Several people were cycling (spinning) for eight hours and they had to be entertained and motivated throughout the day.

Overall, I showed up twice as Spider-Man. Staying too long or showing up too many times would reduce the effect. Several of my business cards at the registratino desk were picked up. I also managed to get some photos, but the mirrors and sunlight caused some lighting issues. Pictures should be up on my costume renting website.

The adults needed more entertainment, than the children. The entire event was to collect money for disabled children and cancer awareness. Two of the people present are also going to try and break the 72 hours world record in spinning. Another organisation present was run by children and it was an organisation that arranges wheelchairs for disabled children. Chaeli was present in a motorised wheelchair. Her sisters run that organisation. Please see The Chaeli Campaign for more details about this.

Geyser flood

Yesterday was lots of fun when I had to replace the heating element of the geyser, since that shorted out the entire circuit for the yard. Opening the taps fully doesn't empty the entire geyser. As a result of that, I got a nice flood to deal with. Lots of things got wet, and I tried to fill the buckets as the water was flowing.

In the morning I bought new tyres for my car with costs me 1300 Rand (ZAR). I did not want to get the cheapest tyres. Now the car feels like a different car in terms of handling and ease of steering. The old tyres were under the minimum permissable profile height (1cm), so this was long overdue.

Getting new masks

Recently a couple of my eye masks either got too damaged to be of use, or were never returned (cannot even get hold of those people). On Tuesday, I went to a local costume maker who is busy making new masks. Normally she makes fancy clothing for trance parties, amongst some DJ related work. The quote came today. I am looking forward to the end results... :)

Today, a message came from the post office to fetch a package which I have been waiting for, for a long time. The tracking system of the post office didn't work, otherwise I would have known about it, unless of course it only went today through the system, but wasn't recorded yet. The package should contain five realistic masks from Greyland Film.

Movie review: Poseidon

Last night I went to watch Poseidon in the Cinema, just to check if it was as bad as the movie review website Pajiba said it was was.
Quite interesting, but predictable. I cannot believe, that Hollywood script writers still add these sections where kids do something really stupid on their own after having seen what can happen.

The rest of the movie was entertaining. It shows what ship designs are lacking.
Overall, the cruise was an exiting trip. Good for when you don't want to watch a "thinking" movie.

Updating website and new costumes coming soon

I am in the process of adding a booking form to my costume renting website. The available costumes section will be split into pieces to display he costumes by category. This is partially due to the next bunch of costumes that are being made locally. Importing licensed characters from overseas is becoming too expensive and the list of choices is becoming small.

Various things

On Saturday (10 June 2006), I had a chat with the people from RE/MAX de kloof real estate property about their promotion at the traffic light in Monte Vista. I was mostly interested in standing there as a character. They had somebody doing that, but sooner or later, that person might not be able to do that. It turned out that the person doing that work at the time was already a replacement. I wanted to get experience on how to do that kind of thing for my own costume renting business which I am running from home outside of my office hours.

On Sunday, I stood dressed at Batman together with the Remax people to hand out business cards. The red and green traffic lights quickly became an annoyance. The Batman utility belt that I bought additionally for that costume came in handy, since I could store my stack of 120 business cards and my car keys. The lady portraying the Remax character was quite interested in doing something like that again, since she enjoys dressing up. I also found out, that Leza and Rony Botha from Remax seem to know my father. Next month they will be doing something like that again. Apparently that character costume tends to make the shoulders a bit sore. Half of the arm is inside of the main bulk of the costume. Now I am considering something like that with my company name on it for advertising purposes, since handing out business cards is only seen by those who actually get the cards.

On Monday morning I fell down on a staircase and hit my back badly. I am still feeling that pain today but it is not as bad as it was.

Yesterday evening I went to visit a lady whom I haven't visited for a long time. She showed me her new car, and we went driving to a few shops. She just needs a bit more experience, then she will drive a lot better as she gets more comfortable doing so.

Another dentist visit to remove stitches

Today, I am going to the dentist again to get stitches removed.

Last night, I found another blood spot on my bed due to a partially broken wisdom tooth being pulled last week Monday. The blood spot was underneath my pillow. Its diameter is about the length of my thumb. Strangely, I haven't actually moved the pillow enough to spot it earlier (time is rare).

After today, I need to make another appointment to get another tooth with problems fixed.

From last Monday's torture, I got my bill yesterday.

The emperor cometh

Due to popular demand for my costume renting business at home and for the upcoming German carnival in Stellenbosch, I have ordered an Emperor Palpatine costume, two pairs of hands for that costume, one Jedi robe and one proper Emperor Palpatine mask from Costume Craze.

The colour scheme of the Emperor Palpatine costume will also work very well with the Queen Amidala costume when people go as a pair in those two costumes to a costume party.

Yesterday, I got a letter to pick up a package at the N1 City post office which contains a Superman and Space Ghost costume which I have ordered a while ago.

Last year, a friend of mine wore a Superman costume for Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) when we helped out at the Readers Den for the day.

Second strike this week

The strike on Tuesday by SATAWU here in Cape Town, caused a lot of violence and damages. Today was supposed to be a march by COSATU, but that has been stopped by the local authorities due to the previous violence. Many fear, that the unions cannot keep their members under control. The last strike had looting, broken cars and shops, burning trains, trash everywhere and clashes with the police.

Very existing here, there is always something happening!

Toothache

Yesterday and last night was painful, especialyl last night.
My wisdom tooth has been rotten for quite a while, and due to it causing me pain, I could not easily fall asleep.

Last night, I decided not to continue testing my pain endurance and actually finally do something about it, since I have already had intensive pain on 31 December 2005 and now June 2006 is nearly here. One of the major delay reasons is the cost involved. Another reasons is every time that the dentist drills, more of the tooth is lost, and its structure gets weakenend until it needs to be removed which costs even more.

This morning, I tried to make an appointment at the dentist at N1 City, just to see that the dentist isn't there anymore due to the construction going on at N1 City.
I will most likely have to go to the premises of that dentist in Edgemead to make an appointment.

Another strike

According to latest reports, there have been clashes between security personnel and the police at the Cape Town Civic Centre and the Cape Town train station which is right next door. Apparently there will be a minimal train service going, so I am expecting to get home late.

Busy costume renting weekend

This coming weekend is a costume party happening with about 40 people. The theme is either superheros or comic characters.

Two days ago, six people came to look at costumes, today somebody else phoned to enquire about three costumes.

Currently what people have decided on is:
Batgirl 2005 edition (medium)
Captain America (medium)
Catwoman (small)
Invisible Woman (medium)
Mr Incredible (medium)
Queen Amidala (medium)
Supergirl 2005 edition (small)
Superman x 2 (medium)

Other requests so far:
Barney (not available due to legal reasons)
Dog

This evening, I have to get three more costumes off the washing line.

FCBD 2006 Report

This year, the Free Comic Book Day 2006 (FCBD 2006) was more busy than last year. Just like in the last year, I was dressed as Spider-Man and helped with the event at the Readers Den in Claremont, Cape Town.

The number of people attending are estimated between 700 and 800. The shop was packed for the first prize draw. A lot of people stood outside as well. I ended up mixing the number, while the other two dressed as Batman and Supergirl picked a random number. They also randomly selected amongst each other about who is going to pick a number. The problem with numbers on papers is, that sometimes they don't easily mix well.

I got dragged into a lot of photos. Many kids were asking me odd questions. If next year is anything like this year, then I will have to stay there longer, until nearly the end of the shop opening hours.

The event turned out to be very well attended and lots of fun. Not everybody wanted to stay around for the prize draw at 12, so that turnout was lower. At 3PM, all of the free comics were gone (first time in five years that this happened).

I don't know yet if I will be there again next year in the same costume or a different one, but I am planning to be there again. The discounts on some products were great.

Job change

One of the job offers that I got a while ago has finally happened. I need to move on urgently. The next stage of my plan involves PHP and MySQL. That will be a critical step to get into the South African online gaming market. The potential is good, but the call costs are still nasty. Hopefully they will go down in the next few years, then things will really start going.

Free Comic Book Day 2006 coming soon

In less than two weeks from now, the annual Free Comic Book Day worldwide event will be upon us again. Last year was the first time that I attended the event at a local comic book shop (Readers Den). The event is meant for families and people of all ages. Preferably they should be able to have eyesight.

Not too long ago, I found out, that a new colleague of mine was there last year. I sort of vaguley remember seeing him there. He still cannot quite believe, that I was the person wearing the Spider-Man suit last year. :)

Bunny suits have arrived for Easter

Yesterday, one light brown and one whtie bunny suit have arrived.
The two suits have just barely arrived and then they were already booked for the Easter weekend.
The time until Easter weekend was a bit short, but in this case it was enough.

Hulk and Storm costumes

On Saturday, 1 April 2006 new adult sized costumes have arrived:
- Storm (medium, from the X-Men series)
- Hulk with padded muscles and head piece
- oversized hulk mask that covers shoulders as well

The Storm costume comes with a deluxe wig and attachable cape.

Soon (this coming Saturday hopefully), there should be two bunny sutis arriving.
Once those have arrived, I have to make plans about getting some costumes made.

Those annoying sales people!

Yesterday my cell phone decided to not show anything anymore.

Since I use my cell phone for my home based costume renting business, I urgently needed a replacement. My old phone was a Nokia 5110. On my way home on the train, I spoke with somebody who mentioned that he could organise me a phone within a few days.

In the evening, I had to pick up two friends of mine from work and drop them off at their homes. The last person that I dropped off mentioned that he has an old phone at his place which he is willing to sell to me for a low price. It turned out to be the exact same phone model as I have been using so far.

Today I sent that person from the train yesterday an SMS, just to tell him not to bother looking for a phone since I got a replacement.

A bit after that he phoned, trying to sell me a SIM card with 50% discount on calls. I hardly phone anybody, and I prefer to send an SMS, since those are short and sweet. He was really trying to get my ID number and bank details, but he never even mentioned the company name. The ID number that I reluctently gave him, he got wrong. The bank details I told him that I cannot give them to him right away since I have to look them up first. He suggested that I should get somebody from accounts quickly to give me my bank details. At that point in time I had enough and told him I will send the details by SMS later. Since he was then trying to get the details right during that call because that was being recorded and the bank had to listen to the call.

During that phone call I was busy with work and not actually interested sicne that whole issue was forced upon me. That SMS never went.

Moral of the story: Don't try to force or corner somebody into a sale if that person did not request it. This is what gives so many sales people and call centers such bad names.

The art of picking up costumes after buying them from overseas

Lately there has been the usual issue with the post office when I was expecting to get a notification to pick up a package from the post office, that it ended up being delivered to my home, when I am not there during the day.

What also happened a few times was not getting a notification to pick up a package that I was waiting for. This leads me on to the next issue: Companies were I order licensed costumes from which are mostly overseas do not usually send the parcel tracking code along with the email notifying me that the parcel has been sent.

The day before yesterday I got a notification about a foreign package that I am supposed to pick up at the N1 City post office. It came from overseas, but no company information was specified. The price tag was 25 Rand (ZAR). I am waiting for at least two packages from overseas, so now I don't know which one of these two it is.

Yesterday I got a notification about a package that somebody tried to deliver to me twice. That one I now have to pick up at the Panorama post office with a price tag of 346 Rand (ZAR). There were no markings about overseas, but it might be as well based on the price tag. It could also be the two bunny suits (brown and white) that I had made by Parties 4 Africa which is located in Empangeni, KwaZulu Natal.

Chatting with the editor of LO Magazine

Yesterday I had a brief chat via an instant messenger with the editor of the South African anime and manga magazine called: LO Magazine

The chat was quite interesting, and I might actually meet him at FCBD at the Readers Den this year. He was there last year, but I did not know which of the people he was. I am very sure that he has seen me since I was in a Spider-Man costume for the promotion.

Photos from FCBD 2005 can be seen at:
Free Comic Book Day 2005

Escape of the tenants

The tenants finally moved out on Friday. The carpets are dirty, some of their stuff is still lying around and somebody has been drawing on walls and closets with a pen.

On Sunday was a case of lack of sleep combined with physical labour which resulted in me falling asleep shortly after I tried to relax to watch something.

The evil of using Microsoft Word for attaching images to an email

A new and totally stupid trend that seems to have been surfacing by the group of people in an office that are non very computer literate: When attempting to attach an image to an email in Outlook as an attachment, they put the image into a Microsoft Word document and then attach the entire document.

There is nothing wrong with using Word, but using Word just to attach one image, which can be attached directly to an email, is very stupid. For those of us that do not use Word or have to rely on a slow dial-up connection (paying per minute connected to the internet), this is a very bad thing.
Word documents can end up being very bloated because of all of the additional information that they contain.

An image can start at a file size of roughly 40 bytes to a couple of MB, with the decent big JPEG images are a few hundred KB in size. An empty Word document starts at 24 KB. Properly optimised images from websites tend to be between 2 KB and 15 KB (if they are big).

Putting an image into a Word document, saving the Word document and then attaching it, instead of just attaching the image, is a major waste of time.

Some people need to learn what common sense is and how to use it. Those that cannot use common sense deserve to be shot!

C# retrieving values from dynamic created fields runtime

Finding proper source code to create form fields on a Windows application in C# at runtime was not so difficult to find.
Getting an example on how to access the fields created at runtime based on names created in a loop is another matter.
After finding source code in some forum for accessing some fields inside of a datagrid, I came up with the following to specifically access checkboxes:

// --- Code Start ---

int iCounter = 0;
int iNumberOfObjects = 0;
string strName = "";
string strState = "";
string strType = "";
iNumberOfObjects = this.Controls.Count;
if (iNumberOfObjects > 0) {
foreach(System.Windows.Forms.Control dgi in this.Controls) {
strType = dgi.GetType().ToString();
strName = dgi.Name;
if (strType == "System.Windows.Forms.CheckBox") {
strState = dgi.ToString();
iCounter++;
}
}
}

// --- Code End ---

Note: The line checking the number of objects and the foreach line reference fields which are directly on the main form. When accessing fields in a panel or elsewhere, then those two lines have to be adjusted. This is working C# code which was created just to see if something actually works.

Lord of the Rings 2 Battle for Middle Earth 2 skirmish and multiplayer review

On Saturday I have had the fun and joy to try out the new Lord of the Rings Battle for Middle Earth 2 strategy game in skirmish and multiplayer. Comments are as follows:

- The AI is very stuffed up: Continuously attacking the same player the whole time. In the first game, the first player was always attacked first. The AI also immediately rushes and then just continues to do so. That very quickly becomes annoying. I thought the rushing could not get worse than WarCraft 3, but it did. The main fortress was undefended and the AI always attacked the wall to the left of it. Building defence towers there just stacked the number of kills, since they just started attacking further left continuously as towers got added next to existing towers.

- As seen with many strategy games, just to make the AI nastier, the AI gets more resources so it builds less resource places and ends up building a lot more troops.

- Those areas for the resource places is also far too big. Everything needs to be spaced too far apart to properly gain resources. By the time there is a fairly decent amount of resources, the resource places have to be built inside of the enemy base.

- Fire arrows are still too powerful.

- Units don't always respond. Formations are mostly useless.

- Memory leaks: Just like the first game, this second game also suffers from memory leaks. My PC with 1 GB RAM ran out of virtual memory and then the desktop was suddenly visible!

- A really annoying feature in the multiplayer lobby caused on player to quit: whenever somebody changes the race or colour, the ready setting of the other players is switched off. After eight times this switching off, the player just left the game. That NEEDS to be fixed! Dawn of War had this done very nicely.

- Those damn annoying videos at the beginning! There are too many of them! There should be an option to switch them off, or to at least be able to cancel them earlier.

- Not everyone is a hardcore gamer who plays a game the whole day for weeks on end.

Pipe burst

On Sunday there was a lovely pipe burst in the street where I stay. At the time I was busy with washing dishes and laundry. The washing machine got stuck since there was no water to continue with the next step. Superior thoughts of joy crossed my mind at the time. Outside was mud everywhere.

A few hours later a friend of mine came to visit. He mentioned that repairs were being made. Some time after he left, the water returned again and the washing machine finished its work. At least now I can finish the dishes which I wanted to have finished by Friday.

Movie cinema prices for the same movie

For two days in a row, I have tried to watch the movie "Final Destination 3" in the cinemas. The first day I was called out due to work. Yesterday (day 2) I managed to watch the complete movie.

Since there is construction going on at N1 City, the late night movies are not shown at the Nu Metro cinema at N1 City. Yesterday I did not make it in time anymore for the 19:15 show at N1 City, so I went to the Nu Metro cinema at Canal Walk, since the same movie only starts there at 20:00.

The same movie for more or less the same time was a bit cheaper at N1 City than compared to Canal Walk. The N1 City cinema is also a lot smaller with fever visitors so the prices cannot be pushed up too high.

Wild costume party

Yesterday my phone went wild because some people were looking for costumes for 19:30 that same day.

Some actually rented, but for others my opening hours were not ideal. While I was at the cinema, somebody phoned, because he needed pants for a pirate costume. The company where he rented his costume didn't supply pants. Today I collected the pants and a costume while I was on lunch break. Both people were in the Seapoitn area, while I am working in Greenpoint.

The party last night was loud. It was at the Monte Carlo at Canalwalk. I only got there late due to various delays. When I finally got there, it was getting a bit too late so I didn't stay too long.

Now you know. :)

Yoda and Catwoman costumes

Today one client brought back my Yoda costume, while a model else rented the catwoman costume, but she was late due to some casting. For this I had to use up most of my lunch break, but that is what can be considered customer service. The Yoda costume was used for some costume party during a jewish holiday which goes over two days.

This morning I sat in the train with the catwoman costume, and tomorrow evening I will probably sit with it in the train again. This evening I am taking the Yoda costume home via train.

An agency from Durban phoned me today enquiring about my Superman costume which they might need in a few months from now. I am suspecting that it will be used for a promotion with the superman movie that will be coming out around that time.

Movie Review: The Fog

After having seen the trailer about one month ago, I was quite interested in this movie, especially since I enjoy watching horror movies.

Last night I went to watch "The Fog" in the cinema. There are only two cinemas in Cape Town that actually show the movie.

At first I thought the trailer gave a lot of it away. It turned out the trailer mentioned hardly anything. The movie was very captivating and nice for watching late at night when it is dark.

What I was curious about is why that fog never got hold of everybody quickly. It always seemed to pick its victims, then it moved on to others. Some people were lucky to escape, some were taken completely by surprise. Those that could escape either had a valid escape reason (not related to the ancestors) or were the heroes in the movie and had a few narrow escapes.

Overall the movie was enjoyable, the plot went at the same speed from the first few seconds right until the end. Not much time and patience of the viewer was wasted on distractions (love scenes and other time wasters).

Busy costume renting day (sort of)

Today there were several telephone calls from people looking for costumes. There was even a call from somebody in Pretoria while I am Cape Town based.

Two people want to come today to check the Catwoman costume, unless the one call was from some family member of that person who phoned. Assuming those are two different people, I might have a problem this evening, because one of the gloves is currently being repaired and both might need the same size. the glove I can still go and fetch, but I don't have the same size twice.

It seems like I need to make my maps section more obvious and not everybody seems to find my contact details, but they all find my cell phone number which is right next to my contact details. Maybe a bit of a redesign is in order and trying to make the site more idiot-proof. There is text saying that the maps all have a bigger picture when clicked on, but that does not seem obvious enough.

Sleepy, lawny roof weekend

This weekend was supposed to be relaxing, which as usual never happened.

On Friday I picked up a friend of mine from work, then we fetched his PC. He stayed over at my place.

Saturday morning I took him to work, then I went back to bed. A bit I was trying to get a haircut, meet someone to discuss a photo shoot, then the "evil twins" arrived. With the "evil twins" my father arrived and somebody who ended up weeding the garden.

The next step was mowing the lawn and then securing a plane on top of the Wendy House. The lawn was lots of fun as usual. Balancing on top of that weak roof top of the Wendy House was another issue.

Saturday afternoon I was at P's village. Later we went to pick up the other character from his work. Then we went to get some McDucks and played Age of Empires 3 for the rest of the evening. During the drive back there was rain.

Sunday morning was yet again dropping off the character at work. At 11AM I finally got out of bed to get some work done. Just before 2PM, the missing costumes series finally came to an end. Later I started getting tired again, then it was a case of picking up my friend from work.

Monday morning was the national train strike, which meant dropping off my friend at work, and getting through traffic jam. Somebody rented the Yoda costume from me in the morning as well for some Jewish holiday.

Train strike on Monday again

On Monday is supposed to be train strike again, according to the Cape Metrorail website.
Sunday evening should be another update. Hopefully the strike does not happen.

I just hope that the previous strike has had an effect on the repair of the train doors. This morning somebody couldn't open a door, so I helped out to let the person out, before the train moved on.

Missing costumes: Part 4

After Missing costumes: Part 3 recently, I was hoping, that the series would be over, but it goes on:

The client came back with all three costumes, but was missing the eye mask and two belts of a Batman costume. The one belt had pockets (didn't come with the costume, it was purchased separately) while the other was just plain flat.

These missing items are supposed to be coming back this coming Sunday in the morning sometime. I just hope that there will not be a part 4.

Hectic chaotic week

This week is just all kinds of things going on:

On Monday I suffered the after-effects of a previous train strike and a weekend of people renting costumes from me. My father and his fiancé also came for a visit.
Work was hectic as usual.

Tuesday nothing was going right at work, due to mail and network problems. Some of these issues might be related to the power failures still going on and new staff members. More issues with people wanting to rent costumes which are supposed to be coming back that day, but were brought back late. I also had to go past the library and get a lot of laundry sorted. My father and fiancé came again.

Wednesday (today): More connectivity issues at work. Some main router somewhere wasn't working. Most of the ADSL traffic for Cape Town goes through that router. More phone calls from people looking for costumes. They were on their way to my place, but didn't bother reading my opening times. Somebody even enquired about taking costumes to Langebaan and sending it back by courier.

This evening I am trying to get some costumes to someone for repairs, but it seems like I can only take some, due to the rest being requested by other people and I won't get them back on time from repairs. This morning somebody was supposed to drop off costumes, but I suspect they did not make it on time due to traffic jam.

The rest of the week will most likely be much of the same chaos. Somewhere I am still trying to get some sleep in.

Free Comic Book Day 2006

On Saturay while getting some comics and a local anime magazine from the Readers Den Comic Book Shop, I also discussed with the shop owners the issue of advertising for people to help out with the annual Free Comic Book Day promotion.

The problem is always finding somebody who is willing to dress up as a character for a few hours to help with the promotion. Last year I asked friends of mine to help out. They enjoyed it a lot. This year the idea is to add one female character. That will be difficult to get.

Currently the most likely female superhero will be Supergirl, since that character was requested by the shop owners. Getting somebody for that is another matter. Too many people don't want to show up in costumes in public.

Anybody volunteering is welcome to do so. You will get paid for the more or less four hours. Three characters are needed in total. I will most likely be again in the Spiderman suit.

Missing costumes: Part 3

Due to Missing costumes: Part 1 and Missing Costumes: Part 2, today is part 3 of the series.

The missing costumes have been returned yesterday near 9PM. Those people phoned earlier and I asked them to come after 7PM, since somebody else was desperate to get them.
Shortly after they left, I phoned the other people to come and pick up the costumes. I did notify them, that the costumes would have to be cleaned. The costumes are supposed to be returned tomorrow morning.

During the whole fiasco, I still had a friend visiting and my father with his fiancé were also roaming around the yard. After everybody was gone, I brought my friend home.

Missing costumes: Part 2

Earlier today I posted a section about missing costumes.

Here is part number 2:

It turned out that those people have had some serious transportation problem. They most likely got stuck in the middle of nowhere. The lady that rented the costumes from me phoned me from work today, just to let me know. It would have been nice to at least have been informed yesterday evening. Apparently I will get them back today after I come home from work. Right after that, some other people are looking for the Batgirl costume.

Yesterday I noticed twice, that I need to get a smaller Supergirl costume. The medium size is larger than the medium size Batgirl costume made by the same manufacturer, and designed in the same year.

Missing costumes

This weekend two people rented costumes from me and didn't bring them back. The telephone number that they gave me doesn't work (I just get a single beep and nothing else). The number that they phoned me from originally is also strange: Somebody occasionally answers but apparently cannot hear me. I tried from a cell phone and from a normal landline. After that, the line is never accessible, as if they are trying to ignore me.

As a result, all future people renting will have to fill out quite a long form before anything leaves my place.

The worst part is, that I will have to order those costumes again, which will cost me quite a bit, and I will have to wait one month at least. One of those costumes was very popular, the other one not much at all. The costumes were supposed to be back by 12 during the day. Somebody else was hoping for them to be back on time.

Train strike

There was supposed to be a train strike today, but that was postponed until next week.
On Friday there was still an announcement at a train station, that there will be no trains today.

Fund raiser in Edgemead

This evening someone will come for a visit to rent my Spiderman suit for a fund raiser tomorrow at the church in Edgemead. Edgemead is right next to Monte Vista. Today and tomorrow is also the Monte Vista carnival at the Monte Vista primary school, where one of the voting stations in the municipal elections was on Wednesday.

The person coming this evening was originally looking for a Barney character suit, but due to legal reasons, that is not available. Either him or a cousin of his might be entertaining kids during the fund raiser. I am planning to go there just to see what is involved at a fund raiser, and what can be done for entertaining people in a costume.

Since I have never seen anyone wearing that suit live, I am looking quite forward to that. I have only seen somebody wearing it at a promotion, or I have been wearing that myself. It is quite fascinating to see how different people look with just different clothing, and the same piece of clothing looks so different due to the body shape and lighting.

Spyware infested PC

Today I assisted with cleaning out the fake-antispyware called SpyFalcon. Don't ever install it!!!

Many anty-spyware utitilies were blocked, popups show up telling you of viruses installed. The application even wants you to pay for it before it even considers removing anything (which I doubt it does). Unistall just runs the application. If you delete it, it just comes back.

After a long battle and howto guides on the internet, that piece of utter and completely disgusting rubbish has finally been removed.

Here is the Howto (credit goes to whoever has written it!):


How to Remove SpyFalcon

It is recommended that you save these instructions to your desktop for later use.

To begin: right click over top of the link remove_spyfalcon.reg, select "Save Link As" or "Save File as", and save the file to your desktop.

Next, download SmitRemFix by Noahdfear to your desktop. Once downloaded, double click to uninstall all the files into a folder, but do not run the program yet. SmitRemFix must be run in Safe Mode.

In safe mode:

Click Start -> Control Panel; launch the Add / Remove Programs icon.

Find the entry for SpyFalcon and double-click on it. Follow the prompts to uninstall the program, but do not allow it to reboot the computer if it asks.

When it has completed uninstalling you can close Add or Remove Programs and your Control Panel.

Delete the following files and folders (if they exist):

C:\Windows\System32\dxmpp.dll

C:\Program Files\SpyFalcon
Close all open Windows; open the SmitRemFix folder on your desktop.

Double-click the RunThis.bat file to start the tool; follow the instructions. If SmitRemFix finds an infection, it will start an uninstaller. Click on the Uninstall button to finish the removal. When complete, SmitRemFix will close automatically.

Your desktop may disappear for a split second as the SmitRemFix removes any leftover files installed by the infection. When complete, it will close automatically and you will be back at your desktop.

At this point, your computer should now be free of the SpyFalcon infection. To verify that your computer is free of infection, you may choose (optionally) to run PandaOnline scan:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/activescan.htm

Once this is complete, reboot your computer back to normal mode.

Election day

Yesterday the elections (in Monte Vista at least) went smoothly. The queue was short in Monte Vista, but apparently it was three times as long before I arrived there. In Welgelegen there was apparently a one Kilometer long queue.

Later as I was trying to get pre-paid electrity and heard on radio news that there was violence somewhere again. All a result of the elections. Usually tempers tend to flare quite a bit especially when some parties have members that just cause trouble. In the end, I didn't get the pre-paid electricity since there was a power failure.

Dawn of War weekend

This entire weekend I was visiting some friends in Kuilsrivier for playing network games. Is this case were were busy with "Dawn of War" (Warhammer 40K) and its expansion pack called "Winter Assault". Every patch and that expansion pack caused a lot of imbalances and shortcomings where somebody trid to fix them, but stuffed up something else in the process.

From Friday evening a friend of mine stayed over at my place so that we don't have to waste time on Saturday. Saturday early morning, I dropped him off at work at Century City. Near 2PM I got and SMS from him telling me that he didn't actually have to work that Saturday and the next day. Somebody didn't bother updating the shift roster and didn't tell him that he doesn't have to come to work for those two days. After picking him up, some lady phoned to urgently rent a costume for a party that evening in Kuilsrivier. After she left, we went to Kuilsrivier for the network games.

On Sunday morning, we woke up around 10AM. After waking up, we did a trip to the pharmacy to get some medicine against my flu. The trip to Kuilsrivier ended up getting a detour to Belhar to pick up the costume. Since that lady did not have her own cell phone and was on the road as well, it turned out to be a crazy chase all over that place. During a waiting period the starter decided not to respond anymore. I was most hapyp about that. After that chase and retrieving the costume and going down a double-laned one-way road in the wrong direction, we finally drove to Kuilsrivier.

The Dawn of War battles ended up every time in the same result, since the Space Marines are just too powerful. The new patch also allows to build Terminator sqauds without having to have a relic, and then those get dropped the whole time in somebody's base, which is a totally unfair method. Imperial Guards do not even have any decent anti-vehicle weapons, and they were supposed to be elite troops, but they are totally under-equipped. The game needs more balancing.

Problems with renting out costumes to an entire group of people

Last night just before 10PM, I received a phone call from somebody interested in renting my Star Wars costumes, which were needed for today. She said, she would come in ten minutes. Ten minutes always end up being at least half an hour.

A whole group of people showed up. First they had a look at one costume, then they started enquiring for 50's clothing. After that they decided not to rent anything at all, just because one person didn't want to anymore and oen or two of them were not that keen to go to some party or event today where they would have to dress up.

This is yet another perfect example of peer pressure with no individualism and having to do what the crowd does. The previous bunch of people were totally opposite and a lot more cheerful and creative.

I, Genius the Great

Last night I have managed to find a way of totally stopping Windows XP from starting up, by just simply editing the boot logo.
The file in question is called Boot.bmp and is found in C:\Windows\System32
Technically speaking there is yet more bugware in Windows, since the operating system hangs from a simple 640x480 image with 16 colours.
This is also some great security :)

The lesson of the story is: Don't use the OS/2 format jsut to see if that actually works, since all the other attempts as per recommendation did not work.

Electricity issues, tenants and car towing fun

The variety power blackouts in Cape Town and the Western Cape are becoming more fun (not!). Work is being hampered, traffic chaos is happening (people letting their aggression out in traffic [very childish behaviour]).

Yesterday evening, I was waiting for people who wanted to look at Star Wars costumes which they need for the 18th of March 2006. Apparently my website was the only one applicable for South Africa, and Cape Town in this case. That bunch was quite a cheerful lot and easy to chat with. Obviously their decisions about what costumes they wanted wasn't final, since there is still lots of time left.

Some time after they left, I helped my father and his fiancé to clear out some of the stuff lying in front of some thirty year old BMW that we wanted to have towed that evening. I still have stains on my hands from that old engine oil. I did wash my hands twice and had a shower, some of the spots are still there. The towing vehicle came later to move the BMW.

We also chatted about removing the washing machine, so that the tenants realise, that they are not welcome there any more. They did receive the eviction notice, but there has never been a proper rental contract. The washing machine was and never is included with renting out a house, unless explicitly specified.

Since the tenants also don't pay for all of the electricity used, I will organise some candles and wait until the electricity runs out again, then I will wait. It is not right, that I have to pay some of their electricity since they always seem to have money problems. They have only paid part of the rent last month and none this month. Unfortunately there is only one pre-paid electricity meter for the yard, and this need to be changed as soon as possible.

Laundry day stuff

Yesterday the original plan was to start washing my laundry in the morning, so that I could take the laundry down from the washing line in the evening.
The plan was ruined by a massive power failure which covered the entire Western Cape.

Until the electricity came back, I did some hand washing (soaking) of costumes which are supposed to washed by hand. Two of the costumes that were rented recently, qualified for this treatment.

In the afternoon from around 2PM the power came back on, so I did some vacuuming (long overdue).

Most of the morning I spent sleeping, due to visiting a friend on Saturday and coming back early in the morning. Due to the power failure and a low amount of petrol, I nearly didn't make it home, since none of the petrol pumps were working. During that trip, I also found out that the traffic cameras used to catch people speeding, have got their own power source (some motorcycle rider got snapped just before I came past there).

Electricity blackout in the Western Cape

On Saturday evening, some colleagues of mine knew already that there was supposed to be a power blackout throughout the entire Western Cape. It only happenend just after midnight, and lastet until lunch time on Sunday.

News article on the Eskom website: POWER SUPPLY INTERRUPTIONS IN THE WESTERN CAPE: SEQUENCE OF EVENTS FROM 11H40, 18 FEBRUARY 2006

Thoughts about some software companies

After years of using the products of various computer software and hardware companies, the following comes to mind:

Intel: We are still the underdog with close to 80% market share.

EA: Every game is a rush job, we want your money for bad quality. Our games aren't actually all ours, but we make sure they get rushed out. Patches don't fix up the lack of proper development.

Microsoft: Bug, bug, bug, memory leaks, features and more features. All expensive. A lot of stuff is buggy, but we do produce some very good stuff on occasions. With every version of our software, everything becomes bigger, and that includes the on-screen buttons! Mostly great games! Installers for software development with anything other than default settings may crash. We make our own standards and force the on everybody who uses globally decided standards. Superior inflated prices. We invested the favorites icon, but after so many versions over many years, our software still does not support it properly. Maybe in the next version... Our operating systems lack certain user-friendliness configuration features, just to annoy you.

Symantec: Full system integration, you can't get rid of our stuff properly with the uninstall. New versions of our big applications are exactly the same with a slightly changed interface, but still the same lack of actual improvement. Even if you do not decide to install a part of a package, it will still be installed. Our software improves your PC by slowing it down a lot.

Blizzard: Good stuff when the bugs are finally sorted out. Our strategy games have the instant rush with no resources feature.

Bioware: Our games have nothing to do with chess, but we have tons of chess maps. Loading, loading, loading, loading, loading, loading... everything is being loaded separately. Tile sets are us!. Our update system is totally useless and cumbersome to use. No, you have to have all of those giant updates. We don't care if you are forced to use a 56K modem. Great game engine, some of the clothing you have to images (like cloaks). No freebies for you. Don't even install when you have a motherboard with a VIA chipset, our installers don't work on those (why not???). Our newsletters just want to sell, sell, sell! In our games you can expect: predictable storyline, no money (look at items but don't touch), slowdowns, stupid situations, and many much more.

Corel: Bugs, memory leaks and total instability. Just stick to the DTP stuff, don't touch the rest, since we don't specialise on that (see previous sentence).

Genius: How would you like you hub chips to be fried? Some of our drivers don't always work.

Google: We publish software packages from other companies that are not always useful.

Yahoo!: Messenger will not allow you to use it properly on two different computers (at home and at work) at separate moments in time. Later you will not log in anywhere. Our groups admin is still lacking some features after many updates.

Codemasters: Bugs in the making, lacking functionality

Renting costumes out to Durban from Cape Town

Today came an enquiry from Durban for nine Star Wars costumes. I am located in Cape Town and it is a bit risky to send costumes away, since there are no guarantees to get them back. During the time that they would be gone, other people might want them. The cost of sending costumes would be quite high, and it is time consuming.
Currently I only have six Star Wars costumes, not nine, which is a bit of a dilemma.

New name: Rub-ons

Yesterday evening I came up with the name Rub-ons for sandwiches. This name was based on getting the margarine off the butter knife and onto the bread. Since margarine does tend to cling to a knife, it needs to be rubbed off the knife and onto the slice of bread, hence the name: Rub-ons

Railway strike: Number next

On 6 March 2006 will be a full strike by Transnet employees throughout South Africa. Yesterday's strike brought the railway infrastructure to a standstill. The members of Satawu are protesting about the proposed restructuring (laying off workers to give the remaining few more work and make more profit by reducing the quality of service) of Transnet.

Here is a news article from the www.kfm.co.za website:

Satawu plan second strike 2/16/2006 7:23:50 AM
The transport and allied workers union says it plans another mass strike early next month.

Yesterdays strike brought Cape Town's rail infrastructure to a standstill while activity at Cape Town harbour seized.

Satawu says if an agreement is not reached with the parastatal's management, all Transnet workers will go on strike on March 6th.

They are protesting against the proposed restructuring of Transnet, which they feel with affect them negatively.

Valentine's Day over-commercialisation

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, today is my birthday.
Just like every year, Valentine's Day is yet again there for some heavy duty money making by a lot of companies. Nothing wrong with that, but just like everything else the purpose of that day has lost its touch.

It is disgusting to watch how society forces people to try and be romantic on Valentine's Day, just because some idiot says so. As a result, Valentine's Day has become the most unromantic day of the year.

As far as I can tell, some people in a relationship always want to force their partners to prove themselves again and again. This can cause resentment and problems in the long run if these things happen too often or are forced a lot.

Keep in mind: Artificial romance is not like the real thing.

Railway strike: Day 3

Super thick traffic jam today, I hope that railway strike is worth it in the long run.
The whole thing just made it more apparent, that something needs to be done with the public transport of Cape Town and the roads which cannot handle the capacity anymore.

The trains are in urgent need of repair and several train stations need major upgrades. Apparently 50 Billion Rand (ZAR) is available but not used. A typical case of management not caring about their customers while lining their pockets.

Since the 2010 World cup Soccer is supposed to happen here, this strike will hopefully serve as a wake-up call since it seems to be the best thing that has happened for a while. Obviously the strike is an annoyance to the commuters, but it serves them in the end.

Railway strike: Day 2

Today I ended up in a nice and thick traffic jam to drop off a friend of mine at work which is nearby where I am staying, since there are very few trains running due to the strike, and no buses that actually start early enough.

Tomorrow the strike is supposed to be at full swing, after that everything is supposed to be back to normal.

The strike is not about petty things like salaries, but about important things like commuter safety, as well as commuter requirements versus management that doesn't want to cater for the requirements but just want to milk the commuters for money. Train drivers are fed up with orders to drive while doors are open, then somebody gets injured as a result and they get blamed. Management doesn't want to do much about the matter, except the usual witch hunt and blame the driver (who followed their orders or face the consequences).

It is about time that people in various companies in the management positions start thinking things through to make more things practical, and actually start being responsible for their decisions, instead of always blaming the person that was forced to implement their bad ideas.

IOL News article from yesterday:
Transnet strike to cripple Cape rail service

Costumes for HIV/AIDS function

On Sunday a lady came to rent costumes from me for an HIV/AIDS event at an airport. Apparently the whole thing is going to take three days in total. After discussions with her colleagues, four costumes were rented: Batgirl, Spider-Man, Ironman and Catwoman
Hopefully everything comes back undamaged.

Initially she did ask me about a condom costume. Somebody else mentioned that some time ago, but more as a joke. I might actually get one for future requests.

Many people don't consider AIDS an issue, or think it is a joke.

Railway strike: Day 1

The strike at Metrorail caused me to waste time in a traffic jam to get to work (more than one hour wasted for 15.1 kilometers!). Apparently that strike is supposed to be from today (13th February 2006) until Wednesday (15th February 2006), which is on my birthday as well. Hopefully it will be over on Thursday, since that is how it was planned.

As a result, a friend of mine cannot get to work, so he is staying at my place for the time being.

Free Comic Book Day 2006 (FCBD)

Today a newsletter from Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) arrived to mentio 87 days until the worldwide comic book event will take place. Last year, the Readers Den Comic Book shop in Claremont (Cape Town, South Africa) was the only shop in the Western Cape that took part.
Read the most recent testimonial from Readers Den

The event in 2005 was lots of fun with visitors turning out quite well, hopefully this year will be better. :)

The latest money making schemes with pre-paid electricity (Cape Town)

Yesterday evening I went to buy 20.00 Rand (ZAR) electricity pre-paid electricity for the Econometer, just to discover that I would have to pay an additional 3.95 Rand. It turns out, that the so-called "Free Minutes" are actually paid for throughout the rest of the month. There are three companies as far as I know that supply pre-paid electricity for the same devices. One of these three is using this system based on lies to make money, because people think they get free monthly electricity.

Moving to a different building in the same yard

Last night I got a phone call from my father. He said that the current tenants have been given an eviction notification for the end of this month (February 2006). Apparently he will also move his furniture out of his place and I am supposed to move in there. The section where I am currently staying might also be rented out.
Obviously the electricity meter will need some adjustments as well as the issue of the washing machine and the washing line will have to be sorted out.

www.entergroupltd.com » Blog Archive » cape town apartments for rent

Total search engine spam and keyword stuffing. This is frowned upon by SEOs and readers. This site does not even deserve an active link to it! Too many people are just too plain greedy.

Read more at http://www.entergroupltd.com/2006/01/30/cape-town-apartments-for-rent/

Train strike again!

Next week from 13 to 15 February a train strike is sheduled at least in the Cape Town area, this is according to the Blits (Metrorail Commuting Times) from this morning. Supposedly busses might be available, but their times are so awkward, that they are of no use to me. The traffic jam will be another great artwork next week.

New software website launched

Due to my publishing of software recently (see Log file splitter update and IIS Log file splitter), I have created a new website yesterday: BKE Software Solutions
This is mostly to keep these random utilities organised a bit.
Out of some reason the wrong favicon is showing.

Log file splitter update

The IIS Log File Splitter that I published a couple of days ago has received a few small updates:
- The "Split" button is only enabled when it can be used.
- Removeable drives don't cause a runtime error anymore
- Added support for Apache log files. The .log extension is still needed.
- Statistics at the end have been slightly improved.

Why not to use MSN Desktop Search

The latest version of MSN Desktop Search that came out a couple weeks ago is not too bad at first, but as time goes by problems start surfacing:

Problem Number 1:
The new tabs which are supposed to be like Internet Explorer 7 looks nice, but it tricks Internet Explorer 6. The entire window ends up being refreshed on occasions, and the simulation is not always going great (notably with the favourites icon). After half an hour to maximum two hours, the browser just freezes totally. Disabling this feature gets rid of that problem. Internet Explorer 6 was never designed to suddenly have such a burden.

Problem Number 2:
The integration as a search toolbar into Outlook went quite well at first, but now it came to the point where Outlook died. The system tray icon of Outlook indicated, that there was a problem. Starting Outlook since it was still running didn't work. The moment, that the MSN Desktop Search icon in the system tray was closed, Outlook popped up as it was supposed to.

Problem Number 3:
After the above problems, I decided to uninstall MSN Desktop Search, since I am using the Google Desktop Search still with no hassles. After the uninstall, I was forced to reboot. I don't think that would be needed, even with the service that was installed there. The service can be removed without a reboot, but the entry would remain, until the reboot has been done. Forcing somebody to reboot is a bad thing to do.

Conclusion:
Stick to Google Desktop Search, MSN Desktop Search is on the search part close, but not good enough. All other Desktop Search tools that I have tried, have fared a lot worse.

Total chaos (everybody loves it!)

Yesterday was a case where a server went to use 100% of the CPU for close to twenty minutes. In the end it turned out, that this happenend because of a currpeted database, which could fortunately be rebuilt.

Today there is chaos on the road, internet connectivity is dead countrywide, all kinds of things are going wrong as well, and the DNS server is having its usual case of ignorance.

At least during the chaos at the train station yesterday evening, I met a nice lady to chat with. We normally both get on and off at the Monte Vista station, but haven't actually talked much previously. Last night we finally got to the Vasco station after 21:00 and had to go on foto to the Monte Vista station to pick up her car. Walking and talking made the twenty to thirty minute trip a lot more interesting.

A friend of mine might be getting a trainer position at his company where he is then going to be in the day shift. From what I can see, management is yet again trying to do some cheap tricks, so that when somebody makes a mistake, then he gets blamed. This is typical management in most companies where always somebody gets blamed, as long as it isn't the person in management who wanted the job done, but didn't plan properly.

IIS Log file splitter

Yesterday a client phoned me about a problem where a franchise would sue the main company since the company website was apparently offline. I know that it wasn't and the main company knew that it wasn't. What a lot of people didn't know was that one of the major ISPs had a connecitivity problem due to bad weather. This ISP rents out bandwidth to smaller ISPs, which I suspect was the problem for the franchise.

Since our usual website traffic reporting tool doesn't work anymore since the latest Windows updtes have been done (W2K Server SP4), I had to resort back to using the older method to analyse the log files.

The client wanted daily information for a specific domain. Since the log file contained information of multiple domains, and the lite edition of my emergency log file analyser doesn't support multiple domains, I wrote my own IIS Log file splitting tool. This tool does split IIS log files if they contain a domain name and then creates a new file with the information for that name, and whatever comment rows were found.

Tenant problems

The tenants here were finally told to either pay or move out. Since they can't actually pay and have missed several months, they are most likely moving at the end of this month.

Looking for a new place to stay

As a direct result of my parents divorcing a couple of years ago, I have to move in one to two months from now. The exact moment is not quite certain yet. Looking around for flats or apartments to rent in Cape Town, showed either broken websites or old information. The prices are also a bit too high in most cases so that is also not affordable. I can afford accommodatino of 1500 Rand (ZAR) per month, anything higher is going to be extremely tight on my already tight budget, due to monthly debit orders. If you have any information where I could rent something (preferably close to Cape Town central), please let me know.

Another interesting day...

Today came and went fast. For a change, I was a bit earlier at the train station than the train, instead of a couple of seconds before the time. I am amazed, that I haven't actually missed it for a long time. The daily jogging also helps.

The morning at the office I spent time on fixing some bugs and upgrading some sections of a highly customised website. The afternoon was hectic chaos, during the late afternoon, somebody showed up to run some SQL server performance tests, while I was busy making a website accessible to search enige spiders, since JavaScript menus just don't work so well. The not much used noscript tag does wonders... :)

One important thing I found out about the new MSN Desktopn search: Do not use the tabbed browsing function. Internet Exploiter (Explorer) is tricked into showing different websites in the same area, and the entire browser goes totally unstable after a while and freezes. This is hopefully only because the tabs are add-ons. This kind of unstable software is what Microsoft is so well known for. On the topic, here is a joke:
How many Microsoft Programmers are required to screw in a new light bulb?
None, darkness is declared as the new standard.

I have also read in the IE Blog that the select statement is finally going to get the CSS sections that everything else had. This is years overdue and was already well know in IE4 (1998!!!).

After returning home by train, a client of my home business came. She took quite a while to pick what she wanted. Since I am renting out costumes, there is always a size issue or some people don't like certain things. After trying on many costumes, she decided on one and rented that for several days. Reminder to self: Update website prices to indicate multiple day rates.

The rest of the evening so far has continued with cooking and playing Total Annihilation. I cannot wait until the inofficial sequel is available called Supreme Commander.

Link Centre Internet Directory and Search Engine

In my usual search for new and existing directories and search engines that have free submission, I have found the Link Centre Internet Directory. The submission is quite straightforward and not as painful as some of the other submissions from various other directories. The home page is also clearly organised since a lot of immediate sub categories can be easily accessed and identified. This makes it easy for anybody trying to submit a site. The sponsored link part is also not aggressivley pushed into view like what can be usually seen. This is part of making the submission less painful. :)

Read more at linkcentre.com/

Moving due to divorce

As a direct result of my parents divorcing, I will end up having to move within the next two months. This is going to cause quite a financial strain and additional problems, but that will be sorted out in time. Either I am going to have to rent somewhere or buy a house or flat. Buying is not much of an option, due to the over inflated house prices and the resulting monthly payments.

New superhero costumes have arrived

Yesterday the new superhero costumes that I have ordered in december have arrived. They are Captain America and the 2005 editions of Batgirl and Supergirl.

The Captain America suit is the same size as the Iron Man suit, which are both a bit smaller than the Mr. Incredible suit, which has a slightly different design. The mask is also open at the back, and those wings always go to the front.

The Supergirl costume looks very nice and it seems to be made out of velvet. This one seemed like the best investment for quality out of the three costumes.

The Batgirl costume turned out to be different than on the packaging photo, and it is also a smaller medium size than the medium sized Supergirl costume.

The costumes have been added to my website catalogue found at:
Costumes to rent from BKE Costume Rental

Back from vacation

Late on Saturday, 7 January 2006, I returned from my three week vacation in Namibia to visit family and friends. The trailer behind the bus lost a wheel and was scraping on the road for quite a while. This caused a delay of three hours.

The heat was only 36 degrees in the shade which is normal for that time of the year.
Once the raining season started with Christmas, there was quite a bit of flooding. It was the typical scenario: Most of the eyar not enough rain, and when it comes, it really comes too much.

Yesterday (Sunday, 8 Januar 2006) I went to visit a friend of mine for the latest updates. I also fetched my costumes from him, which I rented out shortly before I left. The people renting the costumes were instructed to drop them off at his place. The Spider-Man suit was rented for a birthday party to surprise a child (the cousin of the father was wearing the suit). The Catwoman costume was rented for the Mother City Queer Project (MCQP) costume party which apparently was quite a success.