criten’s blog

I’ve been operating my own business for nearly 10 years as a part time thing to earn a bit of cash on the side. Recently the biggest competitor in town closed, and my business has boomed since. I’m learning much about business I didn’t know previously, and am witnessing some interesting sides to society.

Wholesale has been my biggest drama of late. I have several orders of a thousand dollars or so each that are waiting on my wholesale order to be fulfilled so I can then provide the products to the customers. Quite a bad situation, and most don’t appreciate the position of a business when orders aren’t being fulfilled. I’m certainly not to blame, I pay my bills and submit my orders on time. Its a nightmare for me as I’m currently served daily abuse from several parties… and my wholesaler thinks he has it bad having to put up with me. I’ve been accused several times lately of trying to rip people off. This certainly isn’t true, however I’m unable to provide refunds at this present time because of limited finances. Its a situation where if the wholesale order doesn’t arrive, I’m bankrupt. Considering I’ve known the wholesaler personally for many years, I highly doubt the order won’t be fulfilled. The stress of the situation is beginning to take its toll.

While I’m not a new business, I seem to consider myself a new business as I’ve gone from part time to fulltime (and even more). I’m told that 80% of new businesses fail in the first 12 months, on top of that, 90% of partnerships fail overall. While I’m no expert in business, I’m starting to see the kinds of mentality that leads businesses down this road. Surprising that people believe stealing from me is perfectly acceptable, because I’m in business so I must have money, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Not surprising to see a customer who’s never been in management/business to have this mentality… but business owners too? Its interesting how many people take offense when you ask them how long they’ve been in business, as they’re trying to force feed you their inappropriate business advice - the answer is generally not very long, or they’ve had a whole string of different failed businesses.

Got my hands on a Holden Commodore VN Wagon, for free! Rego’ed for the next 12 months now. There are a few things broken on it, like the odometer & trip meter, front seats (they fall back), the rear door (leaks water and is rusting) & some minor electronic faults.

I’m finding the faults on this car quite simplistic. The previous owner told me how numerous times mechanics had fixed the horn but it never did work even after they supposidly fixed it. I pulled it apart, and the contact points were rusted over. Scraped it back with a screw driver, and the horn works great.

Today I even pulled apart the speedo to discover the mounts that holds the stepper motor that increments the odometer and trip meter were broken. Some slightly longer screws and its fixed… sort of. The odometer and trip meter now work, but they increment really slowly. Looking at the condition of the stepper motor, I’m thinking thats the cause - will have to attempt to find a replacement motor, maybe try a little oil first. I could just get another speedo from the wreckers, but the guages in that series car are prone to faults - I’d probably be buying my way into more trouble.

Have a painter lined up to paint the blue panel, although I’m waiting to get a new rear door so I can give him all the work in one go. Should probably get the bonet resprayed too.

Mechanically the car is great. Only thing for me to keep an eye on is the exhaust & steering rack. When the exhaust eventually goes, I think I’ll get something nicer than the stock model. I can also get a re-engineered steering rack that isn’t as prone to the fault I currently have (leaking fluid) as GM’s.

Tempting to get a car identical to this one for parts… the one I have is registered, and has recently had alot of the mechanics reworked so its most certainly worth keeping. Few hundred dollars gets you one that isn’t in great shape at all, although is more aesthetically pleasing.

The Blue Mountains Gazette recently published this article about Telstra’s federal government backed roll out of ADSL2+ in the area. Firstly the Gazette got their figures wrong, ADSL2+ is capable of 22mbit - not just 20mbit, but this all depends on distance from the exchange and line quality as seen on Internode’s graph. Also, I like the quote “network speeds up to 78 times faster than a standard ADSL connection” - while the quote is true, its not a fair comparison. A fair comparison is not against 256Kbit ADSL1, but as you have the ADSL2+ maximum speed you should match it with the ADSL1 maximum speed which leaves you with a figure of 2.75 times faster. Nobody likes misleading marketting hype.

I’m concerned there is much talk of upgrading the D-Slam’s in the EXCHANGE to be ADSL2 capable, but there is no mention of upgrading the MINI-MUX’s which are widely used in this area as many customers are too far from the exchange to get DSL directly from the D-Slam. A mini-mux is essentially a smaller D-Slam in a waterproof enclosure with a fibre optic backbone to the exchange, that can be housed in underground pits between the customer and the exchange to extend the range of DSL coverage… but there are far greater concerns than the extent of their coverage.

“Telstra CEO, Sol Trujillo, last week made a politically charged announcement over the massive network switch-on, applauding the Rudd Government for giving sought after assurances the company would not be forced to resell the service at a cheaper price to its commerical rivals.”

OH MY FUCKING GOD!

So, its not ADSL2+… its ADSL2+ with Bigpond. Does Kevin Rudd honestly think this is a good thing? Telstra Bigpond are well known for their illogical bandwidth metering (counting upload), their high prices, their dodgy marketting campaign (get a free modem! We just won’t tell you the download quota won’t even let you browse videos on YouTube! But you get a free modem!!!!!), poor download quotas, high prices (if you don’t believe me, compare Bigpond Plans with any other ISP in Australia), and lack of customer service.

The only reason why broadband prices are as cheap as they are today, is because of the independant ISPs pressuring Telstra on anti-competative behaviour via the ACCC. This is well documented on Whingepool (I like to call it this, because its true about their forums). If Telstra has no requirement to offer wholesale services to their competitors, we’re left with a market thats to expensive to enter. There is no money in the ISP scene, as has been said by Simon Butcher of Internode & Mark Russell of Green Tree Frog and probably many more. And, with no wholesale services by Telstra… the ISP’s will have to roll out their own D-Slams & Mini-Mux’s, which costs upwards of $100,000 per exchange!

Telstra are in a key position as a wholesale business, and the Australian government should treat them as such. 98% of all fixed line services in Australia are provided by Telstra, which means every other teleco is really just a Telstra reseller. Telstra’s refusal to offer wholesale services on a product line cannot be tolerated, it needs to be mandatory so our competitive telecommunications market can continue to survive - this also means Telstra can’t offer competitive retail products, as they are currently required.

An example of poor service by Telstra, on ADSL1 they fail to meet the demand for faster upload. We live in a video generation with web sites like YouTube, but Australia is held back by Telstra’s artificial limiting of the upload speed to 512kbit & more commonly 384kbit, when ADSL1 is capable of 1000kbit. The 512/512 plans cost the same as 1500/256 plans and offer slower download speeds for no good reason, and often less download quota too - which puts them typically at the reach of small business. If you want to stream live video, your maximum possible bitrate is the same as your upload speed which results in very poor quality video under any codec on ADSL1 speeds. Why do Telstra cap the upload speed? Good question, they’ve never specified - but with the higher priced 512/512 plans, it appears to be profit driven. Additionally, Telstra Bigpond services count upload on their usage meter, even though upload costs them absolutely nothing which is verified by the Telstra wholesale offerings that do not count upload.

I fear Telstra will be offering plans, that offer little download quota and are only competitive because its faster ADSL2+, and will only improve services if they believe they can profiteer from it - customer satisfaction isn’t their concern.

This isn’t good news at all… its eternal damnation to ADSL1, because Bigpond just isn’t an option. Thank you Kevin Rudd!

The Telstra press release also received an appauling response on Whirlpool, seen here

I went hiking to Blue Gum Forest on the weekend. After articles like this, the word going around town is that Blue Gum Forest was destroyed. Its very typical of the tree huggers to accuse the Rural Fire Service of mishandling backburning - they do it all the time. Backburning is the act of lighting a much smaller second fire to burn into the main fire, using up all its fuel and starving the fire. In remote areas, such as Blue Gum, backburning is really the only viable fire fighting options.Remember the 1994 bushfires? What you may not know is, in Winmalee, a suburb which lost 2 suburban streets, there were tree huggers protesting the use of backburn which saved probably the entire suburb!

The same fire that burnt out Blue Gum also burnt bushland across the road from my house (Michael Eades Reserve). The RFS used backburns to control it. The single backburn they lit near my house saved 5 streets, probably several hundred houses. However, the reason why the tree huggers hate backburns is because they can be very damaging. A few kilometres into the bushland near my house, you reach a point where all the trees are virtually dead because they were burnt by two fire fronts, and this is the point where the fire ended up burning out. There is quite a risk of falling trees, especially on windy days, in this area.

The SMH article I linked to would make you think the backburn front reached the fire at Blue Gum Forest. This is not the case - it was nearby to Blue Gum, but it wasn’t actually at Blue Gum. You would also be lead to believe the Blue Gums were at least burnt out. Funny that I saw ABSOLUTELY NO SIGN OF SUBSTANTIAL FIRE DAMAGE TO ANY BLUE GUM. Another funny aspect… 3 of the 4 trails leading to Blue Gum Forest remain closed, due to fire damage, yet Michael Eades Reserve is open.

Conclusion: National Parks & fellow tree huggers want to gain funding & want the RFS to stop using backburns, fraudulently.

Edit: Jennifer who I went hiking with apparently blogged this here

Australia is a typically flat country, not many hills, most land is low lying so not much fog either. Here in the Blue Mountains however, its very mountanous and frequently foggy. Tourists come up from Sydney, and its like the retards don’t know what to do.

Hills are one thing tourists cannot handle. The speed limit could be 80, at the bottom of the hill you will be doing 60 and at the top 80? You save fuckloads of petrol if you give it a little squirt at the bottom of the hill, as you require little or no acceleration to keep up your momentum while going up the hill. WHY CAN’T PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THIS? Another problem with hills… unneccessary braking. Victoria St is a road that is much like a rollercoaster, it goes up and down and up and down, etc. Sitting behind a tourist is painful on this road, as they’ll heavily accelerate up each hill, and brake as they go down the other side. The locals drive on this road much like a rollercoaster - an onboard engine isn’t necessary, just momentum.

The far more dangerous one - driving in bad weather conditions, such as fog or rain, without headlights. This morning I was pulling out of the driveway at work… very low visibility at the best of times due to parked cars etc. Saw one car go past, only because his headlights reflected in the shop windows. Looked clear, so I pulled out. Apparently it wasn’t, because some Queenslander moron was driving without headlights making it impossible for me to see. He had the arse to begin yelling at me. So I blocked him in, parked my car, got out and tapped on his window. Said “How about using your****ing headlights you ***** ** **** - people might be able to ******* see you. And tell all your tourist ******** friends too.”