up and at them!
the inane ramblings of a 30-something geek
How To Extract The Harddrive From Your External Drive
Aug 4th
I’ve gone through 2 external harddrives in the last few months. The second one I bought because I thought the first one was about to die – which it did a few weeks later. But then, like an elderly couple, the second one soon followed a few short weeks later.
Given how badly I’d treated the old girl over the years, I suspected that it was merely just the housing of the external harddrive that was to blame rather than the harddrive contained within, so after doing some research, I worked out how to get the harddrive part out of my External Drive. Then, I can easily purchase a hard-drive dock and grab the info from there. But for now, here’s my handy step-by-step guide on how you can easily do it too:
Here’s a picture of my harddrive – it’s a Seagate, uhh, something or other. It’s kinda old, but this is what it looks like when it’s brand new:
Now, if you flip is over and take the little stand off the bottom, and you’ll see where the screws are that are holding the case together. All you need to do is unscrew those, and you’re in. Here’s a closer photo – they’re in the little round holes there:
Now, you can’t really see thanks to my crappy iPhone camera, but it’s definitely in there. To get to it, you’ll need a long skinny screw-driver. Unfortunately, I don’t own one of those. Here’s what I’ve got:
Not quite the same, but it’ll do. Now all you need to is to carefully and precisely rip that fucking thing into tiny little pieces, like so:
Then, once you’ve ripped that motherfucker to shreads, you’ve got what you’re after:
Voila!
Watch out next week when I show you how to solve a problem when your pregnant wife is overdue, using a few handy tools from the shed!
5 Tips On How To Deal With Rental Disputes
Jul 18th
Let’s face it, as a tenant, nobody likes having to deal with the real estate agents. This is usually because when everything’s going right there’s really no need to ever have to contact them. Then there’s the real estate agent themselves – they’re generally the new people to the industry, or they’re the bottom rung employees who are bitter about their jobs. From their perspective, as the tenant, you’re their biggest pain in their arse. So, how do make sure that things run as efficiently as possible for everyone involved when things do go wrong?
Some of these tips may seem a little bit of an overkill, and there is a bit of work that’s involved, but it’s important that if things do go to shit, you’ve got the paper-work to help you out.
Now, rental law differs a bit from state to state, so it’s important that if shit does hit the fan, you find out your rights. Most of the time, real estate agents rely on the fact that their tenants don’t know their rights, so make sure you read up! But for now, here are is a few simple tips that I’ve picked up over the years:
1. Fill out your Condition Report correctly.
From the very first day you move in, make sure you fill out the condition report correctly. Many estate agents will try and rush you through this process, but it’s important the be incredibly anal about the details. Make note of every single scratch, stain, mark and tear. Also, make sure you have a print-off of the ad for the rental property. If it mentions something that the place doesn’t actually have, make a note of it. If something isn’t broken yet, but looks well worn, make a note of it. Another important thing, bring your camera and take a photo of the new place, and make sure that your camera has the date-stamp on the image on it – use a proper camera, don’t rely on the camera function on your mobile phone.
2. If you need something repaired, ask once, ask twice, but then demand a third time.
At the end of the day, real estate agents are just people, and they’re still just as busy as the rest of us, so every now and then it’s okay to give them the benefit of the doubt when they don’t respond right away. When you need to contact them to get something repaired, make sure you contact them as soon as you notice the problem and via a method that can be tracked. Don’t just call them and leave it at that. Send them an email and CC yourself, or send them a letter via registered post, SOMETHING that is provable that you’ve attempted contact. Whatever you do, don’t use their online reporting form – they’ll give you no confirmation of the report you’ve just, well, reported.
If you don’t hear back in 3 days, send it again. If you don’t hear back then, you need to send them an official “breach of contact” notice (you can download this from the Consumer Affairs website in your state). This is an official notice that goes on record that states that if the requested repairs are not made within 14 days, then the real estate agent are required by a tribunal court order to make the changes. If the first two attempts are ignored, I guarantee you this one will get their attention.
The most important thing here: tell the truth. If the ‘thing’ that needs repairing is your fault, admit it. You won’t necessarily be required to make payment just because it’s your fault (most owners should have landlords insurance which minor property damage), but it’s important that you tell the truth at every step of the way. If you’re found to be lying about events, regardless of how big or small, your events will be all in vain.
3. Keep a diary.
Throughout all of these events, you need to make sure you keep a diary. Take details when you sent notices, when you made and received calls – even detail what you were told. If you were told that a particular tradesman would show up on a certain day, make a note of it, then make a note if the day he actually shows up. Note everything down. If things do go to shit and you end up in front of the tribunal, all this will show that you’ve done your work, and that you’ve done everything possible to make sure that you’re not doing the wrong thing. Also, if you can, try to make sure that you can be home when the tradesman arrives – that way, you can ask them what needs to be done and how quickly it can get done. It’s not unheard of that they’ll send out some regular handyman to just look at the problem, but can’t actually fix it, if only to buy some more time.
4. Keep paying rent.
I know it’s easy to get angry and feel ripped off that you’re paying for something that’s broken, but whatever you do, do not stop paying rent. This is an instant breach of contract, and all your good work will pretty much be thrown out the window. Not paying rent outweighs everything else, and the tribunal will see it this way too.
5. If all goes wrong and it does go to the tribunal, try and act like an adult.
If everything does go badly and you’ve either requested, or been summoned to a tribunal hearing, then all the work that you’ve done above is just about to pay off. Going to the tribunal is kinda like a mini court room. It’s generally just you and the real estate agent in the room with a hearing member. This member is usually someone who’s either well experiences in Consumer law, someone involved in some way in the real estate industry, or occasionally is a retired judge with a little bit of extra time on their hands.
You’ll be told to give your side of the story, with any supportive evidence. It’s important to keep your spiel short and concise and only state facts – don’t bring any emotion into it at all, no matter how angry you might be, leave out any phrase that starts with “I felt that…” or “I’m disappointed in….”, or “it makes me mad when…”. Don’t raise your voice and don’t get sarcastic, don’t cry or get angry, regardless of what is said. You should also make a time-line of events summarised as well that you can give the Hearing Member. Make sure that all your notes, photos, etc, you make three copies: One for you, one you can give to the hearing member, and another one potentially for the real estate agent (only if requested). At the end of the day, you need to be able to show that, no matter what the reason is that you’re there, that you did everything you could to rectify the problem within your best ability.
Typically, tribunal hearings are heard by a “hearing member” who generally will side with the tenant, but don’t rely on this. It’s important to show that you’re a sensible normal person who is just trying to live quietly and peacefully in your own place. Wear a suit, do your hair, make sure you show up on time, don’t use slang or colloquialisms once it starts, be civil with the real estate agent.
Now, the tips above are just a rough guide and based on my own personal experiences. As I mentioned above, if you’re going through these problems, it’s important that you know your exact legal rights, so you should get proper advice as soon as possible. Many problems arise with rental properties because the estate agency will try and take advantage of the fact that as a tenant, you don’t know your rights. Most states have their own tenants union, so hit up Google and find one in your local area, they’re an amazing help and will do anything they can.
All that good work undone
Jul 15th
I went to see a favourite band of mine the other weekend, and while I don’t usually make a habit of going to see the support when I have no idea who it is, I got there early, and caught the support band anyway (who will remain nameless). Now, the band themselves were okay; the music was good, they were all skinny hipsters with too many tattoos and haircuts that my mother would not approve of. What let them down was that they fell into that trap of thinking that the people there are there to see them. Now, when you’re the support band, and it’s never actually announced on the poster, on the band or venue’s website who you are, you need to realise that we’re here to see one band, but unfortunately, you ‘aint in it.
But, in their defence, they sounded pretty damn good. However, their set was ruined because the lead singer was crap at that “between-song-banter” thing. He kept trying to make jokes that weren’t funny. It was kind of annoying and it was hard to describe exactly what these guys were like, until they finished one song in particular, and the lead singer summed himself up when he said the following, word for word:
you know, I don’t normally put much of a narrative in my song lyrics until I wrote that last song, cos you know, I finally had something to say. That song was about fuckin’ some chick and gettin’ her pregnant, then you just have to fuckin’ run away from that shit before she wants you to do something about it. Cos like, you know man, that’s fuckin’ bullshit in my life that I don’t have time for …. okay, so this next song is called “Vomit In My Hands”.
That’s when I left.
[movie review] #40 – The Human Centipede
Jul 6th
Now, I quite like a good horror movie. I’m not much of a fan of the basic slasher flick, but as long as it has a plot that makes a little bit of sense and sounds like it took longer than 5 minutes to write, then I’m in. And the more gore, the better. So you can imagine my excitement at hearing the concept of this movie – a fucked up “misunderstood” German doctor kidnaps three tourists and joins them surgically, ass to mouth, forming a “human centipede”. So this MUST be a good movie, right?
Now, there’s a few negative things that can be said about describing a horror movie and I worked out the worst word you can use to describe a horror movie. This movie is boring. It has plenty of other problems with it, but boredom is the main one.
The acting is awful, the pacing is painfully slow, it’s about as scary as an episode of Play School and the plot is so full of holes that it almost makes it unwatchable. And worst of all? There’s no gore! The concept is enough to make you squirm in your seat, but that’s all there is. It has zero gore. You don’t really see any of the actual operation taking place, and even after, the victims are covered in bandages. The movie has about the budget of your average high school ‘media studies’ class project.
The movie lasted about 20 minutes before I felt the need to hit the fast-forward button to get to something decent. And I struggled to find a place worth hitting ‘play’ for. This is quite possibly one of the worst movies I’ve seen all year. I cannot think of any reason why anyone would find this movie entertaining in the slightest.
Brian McFadden Doesn’t Want Ugly Fans
Jul 5th
I must admit, I love shit-stirring. If “taking the piss” was an Olympic sport, you’d be seeing me on TV telling people that I “get up every morning and eat 9 Weet-Bix”, while having a swag of gold medals hanging around my neck. However, sometimes when upsetting friends just isn’t enough and it’s time to fry some bigger fish, I to turn to the internet. Usually this gets my fix, however lately, I’ve discovered that there are still celebrities that are prone to feel self-conscious about copping a bit of lip. Now, I follow quite a few famous folk on Twitter, but rarely ever reply to them directly. I find it quite sad when I see friends of mine replying to people like this, because a) most of the time it’s not REALLY them, but someone in their PR team, or b) if it really IS them, do you think about of the thousands of people following them, that they’re going to even give you the time of day? Now, obviously this depends on the popularity of the celeb in question, but 9 times out of 10, that person on the end of your favourite celeb’s twitter account isn’t actually them.
Except, as I found out recently, Brian McFadden.
I have a friend of mine who I recently found out was a bit of a Westlife fan, but during an afternoon of a few tweets back and forth, admitted to me that she’s stopped following Brian McFadden on twitter because he’s just way too stupid – and I agree. His twitter reads like the demented thoughts of a 14-year-old crack-baby after way too much red cordial syrup. However, when she told me this, she used Brian’s actual twitter name, which he actually read, and promptly replied with:
thanks… don’t like followers who are so ugly that they cover there face with a hat!!!
Now, I didn’t take too kindly to this one, so I decided to reply back, but did so with the feeling that he would never read it, but he did. Not only that, but he replied! Here’s what followed:
Now, I know that I egged him on quite a bit – I’m in no way trying to claim that I was attacked, however this raises a few issues. Firstly, going all the way back to the original insult to my friend. Aside from the fact that she’s actually gorgeous, I find it quite odd that he, as a performer, would ever insult a fan like that. Regardless of what she may have said about him personally, she’s obviously (even if it is unfortunate) a fan of his music, which is the main reason she followed him in the first place. But here’s the worst thing I find about his tweet to her: He had no idea how old my friend was. What if she was my 12 year old niece? Seriously think about this – can you imagine the sort of effect it would have if, at the tender age of 12 years old, one of your musical idols told you that they didn’t want you as a fan because you were too ugly. So ugly, in fact, that you should have a hat to cover your face. Shit, that’s the sort of thing that would ruin me right now, and I’m in my 30s!
So why is this important? Brian McFadden is more than just a person, he’s also, from a professional point of view, is a brand name. He’s on Australia’s Got Talent as a judge, he’s trying to re-launch a solo pop career, and is constantly under the spotlight of all the women’s mags because he’s shacking up with “our Delta Goodrem”. It’s his duty, and the duty of his PR team, to make sure that the brand of Brian McFadden is being kept in the highest of spotlights. I mean, this is a family-friendly guy we’re talking about here – it’s not like I was on Twitter insulting the lead singer of Cannibal Corpse.
Thirdly, I find it quite odd that he got riled up at me. This is a guy who was in Westlife for years, moved over here and stole Delta’s heart and is now on our radio and tv screens on a daily basis. He’s constantly under the spotlight – surely all of that can’t be all positive feedback he’s getting? Are you trying to tell me that Brian, the guy who has over 47,000 followers on Twitter, was riled up enough to let something that some no-name douchebag from the Melbourne suburbs said about him on Twitter anger him enough to engage in the twitter-spat above? Grow up, Brian!
Epilogue …
It seems that he’s now unblocked me on Twitter, and obviously has had a word from his PR agency after all, because when I looked this morning, all those associated tweets are gone from his account. What he clearly doesn’t realise is that there’s no such thing as a true “deletion” from Twitter, so all these tweets are still floating around on the net if you really need to find it. I mean, Brian’s right, Twitter isn’t a press release or even a “english grammer exam”, but as someone with a reputation, who’s been looked up to by people of all ages, everything you do is going to be judged and scrutinised. The biggest shame about all of this, is it’s not the first time he’s gotten into trouble about this – just a few months ago, he was blasting his ex on Twitter, called her a “pig face” and said that she’s “dead to him” now. Seems they’re even struggling to keep him in-line on tv too – just a few weeks back, he told a contestant on stage that he should “fuck off back to England” (of course, their little exchange was edited out for the show)
To quote the line from the movie “you can’t stop the signal”.
but more importantly, to quote me personally “Brian McFadden is a giant douche”.
