So I just spent the better part of a Sunday afternoon with a couple that Vincenzia knows through her pottery connections and socially.

They made a date with us for an evening during the week (which I cancelled due to flu) and they then rescheduled for Sunday afternoon tea, i.e. Today. We were quite excited, finding people that we have some reasonable connection with is not a simple task.

She (of the couple) mentioned when scheduling the meet, that that they wanted to talk to us about a “business opportunity” which we (quite gratifyingly) put off until AFTER we had had our quiche, and coffee on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I’d been highly suspect of the whole event beforehand because of the “secrecy” and lack of “wanting to talk about it, until we see you”.

Of course, I’ know how these things go. After quiche and tea, we sat on the porch to listen to “the thing”.

Started off talking about “passive income”. It took ALL my might not to roll my eyes and freak out.

Eventually once we got to the point of “being part of a big company that distributes products and makes lots of money”.  I asked… “So, is it Amway?”

It was indeed…

So that was the end of a nice afternoon, with a couple (in the IT industry _nogal_). I politely indicated that they should stop talking and, very surprised, asked: “Why? What’s bad about Amway?”

If I had the time, or the inclination, I would have gone down the rabbit hole, but in the interests of my ulcer, irritable bowel, and general stressed-out-ness I just indicated that I have not, could not, ever be a “merchant” of wares.

The rest of the afternoon carried on under strained conversation and I quite honestly could not wait to show them the door.

How to screw up what could have been a nice friendship? Try to sell Amway. And that’s why it works. Because 90% of people feel so uncomfortable being accosted that they agree to “sign up”, or buy “stuff” simply to make everyone and their verbalised dreams happy.

What a crock of …

Die Amway…  Die… Die American sales dream. Die… This is Africa.

I’ve been working with OpenRADIUS for nearly four  years now. I build high-availability and carrier grade RADIUS stuff with it. And I can only endow respect, and “I’m not worthy’s” unto it’s creator: Emile van Bergen,

I chose OpenRADIUS when Neology started, for a number of reasons:

1.  It extends like Apache. With FastCGI, except better.
2. The behaviour language allows me to do pretty much anything. It’s like Assembler.
3.  Emile took the UNIX paradigm of programming, and applied it to RADIUS.
4. The proxy code is phenomenal.
5. Dictionary support is excellent, and adding new ones, a cinch.

OpenRADIUS is like the GAS of RADIUS. I won’t recommend it to any newbie in trying to get things going, but as I’ve  had to add more features, and plumb more cleverness into OpenRADIUS I keep looking back at the days when I researched things like FreeRADIUS, and just cannot believe the quality of OpenRADIUS from as produced (largely) by single developer. The website, isn’t too snazzy, but the documentation is brilliant. I think Emile is so tied up with making a living that the project sometimes suffers from not enough marketing and “bling”, but then again, I prefer technical information above flashy logos and useless wiki’s full of cookbooks.

Ik til m’n hoed voor u, Heer van Bergen.

I’m impressed. Rossi a colleague of mine,  has managed to “brick” his recently acquired e-cigarette. There was this “magic blue smoke smell” in the office, and we were all skulking around trying to figure out where the smell came from until we saw him grinning at his table.

Apparently the bricking had to do with the multimeter he held in his hands and “measuring something” and “getting the vapourizer a bit wet”.

Hehe. I’m kinda impressed tho. Everyone knows any new electronic device needs to be “hacked” and prodded a bit.

Not so much for their software, but SO much for their hardware.

I am the unfortunate owner of an XBOX360. I bought the thing as an import from Japan, before they were even available in South Africa, because Microsoft, in their *wisdom* decided that it’s ok to let South Africa only get Xboxes EIGHTEEN months later. I only bought it because I couldnt get an ORIGINAL Xbox anywhere in South Africa (and all those were “grey imports” too).

So, I had the thing sitting, not doing much for pretty much a year. I couldn’t play any of the old XBOX games, because Microsoft hadn’t release the “backward compatibility” stuff yet..

Eventually, when it became “launched” in South Africa, the games were ludicrously expensive. And — I had to bribe someone in the UK to pay for an XBOX Live voucher, just so I could use the online features of the damn thing.  Even now. Nearly four years after the XBOX launch, NOT A SINGLE PERSON IN SOUTH AFRICA CAN USE THE ONLINE FEATURES. You simply can’t pay for Xbox live access. I mean, you can’t even choose “South Africa” as the region on this piece of Microsoft fail.

Barring that, my few months of use with the infernal device didn’t last long. I started getting the infamous “RED RING OF DEATH” crap. Of course, since my Xbox was a Japan import, and older than a year, I could not get it fixed.

I’ve spent nearly 18 months with heatguns, towels, heatsink clamp replacements, and extra heatsinks on the memory chips etc,  etc. Each attempt resulting in about three more weeks of use out of the infernal device.

Reality: The thing is a piece of crap. I will never buy a piece of Microsoft, or any other mainstream (that’s you Sony) piece of hardware ever again, until it’s hit release 900 and ninety nine.

I replaced my xbox with an AMD64 Debian Lenny machine, running XBMC, and honestly — my son, and even the missus  loves it more than the XBOX. No frigging red rings of death for one…

I love the repplacement PC/XBMC  too. If some piece of it breaks, I know how to fix it. XBMC play’s .iso’s, .img’s and even .rar’ed movies, without any intervention. PC hardware in general, is also MUCH more reliable.

XBMC  wins on all the usability frontends , way more than an XBOX. It’s sad, that in the end, the most function for my XBOX was as a media player. XBMC changed all that. Yes, fine. I can’t play “Altered Beast” on the new Media PC (yet).  At  least when I tell XBMC to play a damn movie, it does so. Reliably.

Consoles have a LONG way to go, before beating general utility computers. And general utility computers simply need a replacement for XBOX Live, Apple AppStore and then we’ll see the end of proprietary bull. All that general utility computers need is a nice casing, and an HDMI or RCA output. That’s not so difficult.

I will personally pay the guys that commercialise XBMC double the  amount of money for a perpertual XBMC license, than I paid for my XBOX.  Because it works. I can tinker with it. I can fix it. All that XBMC needs now, is a good game distribution model behind it, and some web2.0 scalability and it will be good-bye Tivo-ism.

Oh, and controllers. Uhm wait. There’s many of those already. At like, HALF the price of an XBOX wireless controller.

You know, I get kind of miserable when I look at blokes like Joe’s life, and pictures and his daily routine that he so succinctly posts to his blog, every damn week.

Joburg is miserable in comparison. Alternatively, I just need to figure how  Joe does to have it so neatly. 4HWW ? I wish…

Let me summarize my work week, and then we compare with Joe:

Monday: Getup, work, get home ~6:30pm, have dinner, chat with Vincenzia. exhausted, Sleep.

Tuesday: Getup, work, get home ~7:30pm, have cold dinner, brief chat, exhausted, Sleep.

Wednesday: Getup, drop Ruben at school, meetings at work, problems with crap, get home ~6:45pm, chat, exhausted, Sleep.

Thursday: See the pattern ?

Friday: Get up, have usual Friday braai at office, interrupted by problems, get home ~5:30, go out for sushi in Rosebank @ Tsunami, and then crash for sleep.

Saturday: Wake up late, make breakfast, take Ruben bowling in Rosebank, plan next steampunk invention.

Sunday: Wake up late, play “Wallace and Gromit” on the Xbox for an entire day with Ruben, braai late afternoon, crash, sleep.

Monday, rinse, repeat.

The reality is that Joburg is a very “un-exciting” place to live. I can count on my hands the few fun things to do (granted I’m not easily entertained), but there is a distinct lack of natural beauty and fun things to do.  I stay in Greenside, in a leafy, calm suburb. But really, when I leave home there’s not that much else to do. No beautiful vistas. No awesome picnics.

This is largely because everyone’s just too crap scared to actually go outside or do anything, I think. A walk at Emmarentia Dam a mere kilometer from my home, could cost you your cellphone, wallet and potentially your life.

Wtf.  I wanna *cry* sometimes. Should I look for  for a life in Silicon Mountain?