Yesterday evening (or early this morning rather), I discovered that this blog had been hacked. After the upgrade, I was checking everything out and discovered I had an invisible ‘admin’ user. This fellow could come in anytime and erase/deface/spam my site at will. And because he was invisible, it was not a straightforward matter of deleting him. In the end, I had to go into the database directly to look for his ID and delete him. I hope that’s the end of that!
Death, pain and suffering to hackers (in that order)!
I came out of the bedroom this morning with baby in tow, as usual. This time though, I forgot to take something with me and went right back to my bedroom only to find the door shut and worse, locked! I thought someone had gone in and I called out if anyone was inside, but immediately, Ren told me that he had locked it coming out!
I was so mad at him I gave him a good telling off. Of course, I felt a little bad after I’d cooled down and made my peace with him; poor fellow was quite subdued and I suspect he won’t do that again.
Anyway, the door to our bedroom, for Lord knows what reason, is unlike the other bedroom doors, and has a lock set that is usually used for front doors rather than bedroom doors. And we had never had the key to this lock, because the previous owners said they had never used the key either and didn’t know where it was. I had told myself numerous times before to get the lock changed just in case something like this happens, but human nature is such that many of us tend to procrastincate…
So thinking that I would try to save some money, and because I had successfully picked locks before, I had a quick browse of the Internet to refresh my memory, scrounged up a makeshift torque wrench and with a paper clip, set to work. Unfortunately, after more than an hour, I was not successful.
So I surrendered and called the locksmith who came in later in the day and charged $110 for picking the lock as well as changing the cylinder so that we would have new keys for the lock.
It looks like our bathroom renovation is finally at an end, after a litany of errors and delays. Even after the new acrylic sheeting finally arrived, more problems occurred. The shower door was found to be too tall because they didn’t take into consideration the height of the shower-base when tiling the wall (They normally install the shower first before tiling, but because of the delay in arrival of the acrylic sheeting, they proceeded with the wall tiling first and made these mistakes). So a new side panel and door had to be located. This arrived the next day, sans the door. So another trip to get the door. Then this time, the door was found to be too wide! Another day of delay before they finally sorted everything out today, just in time for Nat’s arrival next week. Now I just have to get the ceiling painted.
I think I shall delay my final payment to them for a couple of weeks!
Posted by Tuen on 13th August 2009 in Diary, Rants
So the 10th of August rolls around and I give Rob a call to see if the shower screen has arrived. It has and he tells me that they will come and start installation the next afternoon.
Next day late morning, Kevin comes around and starts working on the screens. He asks for the garage to be open so he can connect his circular saw to the power supply there. After taking measurements (and finding out that the screen is a little short and that the tilers will have to come back to put a few more tiles in) he goes out to do his cutting.
I’m sitting in my study and I suddenly hear this very loud shout and the cessation of the saw. So I dash out thinking he might have injured himself. But he hasn’t and he says that he just mis-cut a part of the screen. At this point, the implications of what he said does not yet sink in, and I say that it’s better the screen than his hand or fingers. It’s not until he calls Rob to tell him of what happened and until Rob calls him back later that he comes back to me to say that it will be another 5 days before they can get another screen. It was only then that I realised that what had been damaged had been the screen that we had spent the last 2 weeks waiting for to arrive on a ship; and this guy damages it within the hour of his starting work.
At that point, I was thinking maybe it would have been better if he had injured his hand instead of damaging the screen.
About a week ago, I discovered a very small trickle of water leaking into my toilet bowl from the cistern. I didn’t bother about it as I thought the trickle was very small and I was hoping (stupidly) that somehow, the problem would go away by itself. Well the leak got progressively worse, and a few days ago, I tried turning off the inflow valve to see how long it would take the cistern to empty. I left it overnight and by the next morning it was empty. This was too much water being wasted (at least an extra flush a day) and I decided it had to be fixed. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Tuen on 7th January 2008 in Diary, Rants
I never did post the final outcome about my computer which I had sent in for repair under warranty to Harvey Norman. Well it finally did come back, and the electronics worked, but guess what? The power switch was broken. Rather than face the prospect of being without the computer for another month, we now turn it on and off using a pencil. Sigh. But that’s not the end of my rant.
A couple of weeks before Christmas, my Philips Digital photo frame went dead. It was still under warranty, so I sent it in for repair to… yes, you guessed it, Harvey Norman. Up till last week, I didn’t hear anything about my frame, so I called them (this time it’s the Chadstone branch) and the tech promised to call me back after he checked with Philips. Of course, he didn’t – surprise surprise. So today, I finally got hold of him and guess what he tells me – Philips hasn’t even looked at my frame yet!!
Last evening, we attended Sacre Coeur’s Speech Night, because Melissa had received a study award. It was for Religious Education. I guess she was a little disappointed because she had been hoping to receive an award for Further Math as well. It says something about our attitudes, doesn’t it, when we consider a study award for Further Math to be more important than one for Religious Education?
The Chongs also attended because Cassie also received an award, for music, and Isabel had to be present because she was performing in a musical item.
The events leading up to the Speech Night are worth recounting in detail, if only to get them off my chest. The speech night was held at the Melbourne Town Hall. I had originally wanted to take a train down, because Flinders Station was just a short walk away from the Town Hall. But for reasons which I shall not divulge (it’s a sensitive topic, if you know what I mean) we ended up driving down. We dropped the girls off at 7pm at the Town Hall, and then proceeded to try and find our way to the car park indicated by Sacre Coeur in their invitation letter. I depended on my GPS navigator for this. Unfortunately, when the GPS is surrounded by tall buildings, it tends to get things wrong, and we couldn’t find the indicated carpark. So we decided to just try any nearby carpark, as it was approaching the 7.30pm start of the speech night. The first carpark we entered had a sign that said it would close at 8pm. No good. We tried to get out but were held up at the exit gate for almost 10 minutes because some other bloke had lost his ticket or something like that. The next carpark we tried, we saw a sign that said it would close at 7.30pm sharp! All these miserable signs were inside, after you entered the one-way entrance, requiring us to take a miserable ticket, manoeuvre around the carpark, validate the ticket and get out from the exit point. By this time, it was almost 7.30pm. We were getting desperate and frustrated, so much so that when Mary, who was driving, tried to make a hook turn earlier (another ridiculous feature of Melbourne city traffic), she got confused and almost made a U-turn instead. That was a close call. Anyway, we finally managed to find a car park that closed at 10pm, and walked to the Town Hall about 8 minutes late.
Soon after we arrived, the Chongs arrived! So they were late too. Here’s a bit of history: My cousin has been contemplating buying a GPS as well, but has not done so because he felt that his wife, the human GPS, was a better navigator than the electronic GPS. Well it seems the human navigator couldn’t easily find the Sacre Coeur indicated carpark as well! I mention this because I was chided for not bringing the Melways into the car. So this at least vindicates me because even with the Melways, we wouldn’t have been able to easily find a carpark. Driving in Melbourne city simply stinks, whether you use a GPS, human navigator, or the Melways.
Oh, and I had to leave early from the event, and miss Isabel’s performance, just to be able to get the car out of the carpark by 10pm. And it cost me $34 for the two and a half hour parking slot!
Suffice it to say, in future, we will most likely take a tram into the city.
OK, end of rant. Below are the videos of Cassie and Melissa receiving their awards, and of Sarah and Wen’s performance:
