Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Creating a small home network; simple you say? Oh yeah!

OK, so they tell me this is an easy task.

Maybe it is, if you have six years of network tech training and a MS VP status.

But hey, all I want to do is network a very small cluster of two hardwired machines and one wireless device together.

"How hard can that be?" I ask myself.

Faaarking near impossible.

For a start the wireless tablet and one of the desktops are running XP, the primary machine ( mine) is running Vista.

Aaargh. Not even Methuselah himself would have the patience to keep trying, and trying, and trying again to get this to work.

Ah hah, "create a wireless network connection," reads the appropriate Network application window.

OK.
No problems...put this in here and pull it out.
Put it in there and shake it all about.
Should work.

Oh Yeah! Like hell!!

"Not recognised. No software loaded".

Huh! All I want to do it get them talking to each other.

Ah well, I give up. No wireless connection; hardwired only.

I guess it's gotta be easier than using Linux, or Mac OX.
Hasn't it?

ENDEND

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Making the Move

It has taken less than a month, but today Nutshell starts operations from its own little office.

For the past fourteen years Nutshell has been working from my kitchen table, literally.

We have had a manufacturing operation, where the work gets done, but for the main the admin of the website and the constant attention to the needs and ministrations of the Internet have been my responsibility. And this is honestly not the type of work that can be done from someplace else.
o...it has been my 'joy' to have my house cluttered with the stuff I need to do the job; the books, papers, ancillary bits and bobs that have made Nutshell the small but growing force it is today.
And now it has moved...

Not far, just from the house to a small office out the back.
Originally, post Christmas, I decided I wanted to get on with restoring my old car, and the best place to do that was in a shed constructed and attached to the back of my little old garage, a standalone one built God Knows When - probably about the time of the last ice age.

But circumstances change. My partner has informed one and all that the dreaded rot has set is and he is not for this world as long as we all would like, and I have realised that there is no way I can continue to do what I do on my own....so

The shed has become the office
Lined, sealed and carpeted...it is now officially the office of Nutshell Corporation.
A small space on the edge of the wilderness.

From where I sit there are no houses, no signs of human habitat other than mine. Tall trees march majestically down the valley; pines, gums, tress that are dropping their leaves as autumn encroaches relentlessly upon us.

A peaceful space that will, I am sure, serve us very well until Nutshell properly 'gets its act together' to move to more palatial spaces....sometime in the future.

But for today. We are here.


END END

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Road rehabilitation

Honest. It's on a sign in Northland. Road rehab. Like something out of someplace else.
Surgical procedure for carriageways.
Or another sign of an overpaid and under stressed beuracracy
Maybe the contractors who wield power over the process consider themselves civil surgeons, and price their services accordingly.
As for the actual teams who perform this rehab process; maybe they too hold a status usually reserved for some other practitioner of another arcane artform, like...hiway men. Best known for their ability to ply their trade on the Kings hiway.
Which trade? You may well ask.
The one that extracts the most return for the least amount of effort. Extortion, I believe it's called.
Far be it for me to decry any mans attempts to earn an honest days wage. Or suggest any form of collusion twixt johnny and his master.
But read the budget lines and wonder at the costs.
Then ask youself where the money goes.
The answer may amaze you.

ENDEND

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Watching the pennies

In these tight times we all gave to do our best to stay afloat.

For me, ten years behind the kitchen table and another couple of hands to the pump means no longer is the kitchen table big enough.

What to do? Options included taking a small space in town; downside is the travel, time and confusion this would cause.

Other option; put the renovation if the Vauxhall on hold, turn the newly created workshop into a socially acceptable small office and shift everything off the kitchen table and create a space that will fill the bill and most importantly not cost a fortune.

The cost effective option, and sanity, prevailed. So now it is paintbrush to the fore.

By Easter we should be moving onto something that is about the same size as a smallish nutshell.

Kind if fitting really.


ENDEND