Gareth Bezett

Summer City

2010-01-27T14:52:00.002+13:00

Once again, Wellington's Summer City programme has been fantastic, and it's not over yet. Tracey and I have taken advantage of a couple of the ASB Gardens Magic free concerts and might even get to one or two of the films in the gardens too. The only bad bit has been the weather. There have been a couple of concerts that we would have loved to see if not for rain.

Unemployment

2010-01-21T10:25:00.003+13:00

I'm unemployed. I left CSL at the end of November. I applied for a couple of jobs before Xmas that would have suited me well. It seems I was seriously considered as I had two interviews for each position which was encouraging. Since I started hunting again since 11 Jan I haven't had much in the way progress but it seems there are still jobs to apply for.

My CV has come along way since I first started out. I think I assumed that people reading my CV would be able to infer all manner of things that they never were going to.

Blackberry Calender not Synchronising Both Ways

2009-08-12T18:03:00.003+12:00

We've had a long-standing problem at work where appointments added to Blackberry handset do not show up in Outlook.

We run Balckberry Professional Software 4.1 which is a cut-down version of Blackberry Enterprise Software (BES) for small businesses and Exchange 2000. The problem only affected a small number of out users but was naturally frustrating. I searched for solutions via Google and tried my own troubleshooting. Evenually, I asked for support form Gen-i who sold us the software.

They pointed me in the direction of the "send as" and "receive as" permissions on the mailboxes in question. I could see that the BES account was denied those permissions on the affected accounts, but this setting was being inherited and I could not figure out from where. Further research showed that some built-in accounts are denied these permissions by default.

I needed to use the Exchange System Manager program to change the permissions on the Organisation to eliminate the "deny". The problem is that that program doesn't display the permissions by default and a registry hack is needed to make them accessable. The other option would have been to use a new account for the BES service.

Once I had done this, the problem disappear and I now have (probably temporarily) a couple of very happy users.

Moron Says What

2009-05-04T16:29:00.003+12:00

I am waiting to hear back from this band so that I can buy their EP which was launched on Saturday night.

SAN Hardware Failure

2009-04-28T14:50:00.003+12:00

Had a call from a lovely chap at Hewlett Packard about 1:30am this morning to say that my EVA4400 had reported a bad cache backup battery. The original firmware had a tendency to throw this particular error so I wasn't too concerned. I did, however, get up and check the management software which did show an actual error. When I arrived at the office at my normal time, I double-checked the physical hardware and it had the amber LEDs of an HP device with problems.

It took HP a little while longer to get back to me than agreed but once I had confirmed the error, a replacement was with me in a couple of hours. My assistant swapped out the unit and things appear to be back to normal. All very painless.

Crosstab Report Builder

2009-04-20T18:51:00.002+12:00

For anything other than our standard, predefined sales reports, our users have relied on pivot tables in Excel from granular data outputs. This is fine, if a bit slow, for users that are familiar with them. Pivot tables can take a while master if you don't use them regularly so I wanted to make things easier for those who don't.

There are plenty of how-tos out there for a stored procedure in SQL server that will dynamically create a cross-tab report. I decided to replicate the basic approach in an ASP page for a custom sales report. I allow the users to select to column and row heading fields and fields to filter one. The next page asks for a date range, has drop down boxes with the possible values for the filters selected and the choice of web page or Excel output. The value field defaults to value but I will give the option of quantity as well as increasing the field options down the track.

The Wonder Years

2009-04-19T07:23:00.002+12:00

The consensus on the interweb seems to be that:

Unlike most long-running popular American TV sitcoms, The Wonder Years has still not yet been released on DVD as official season box sets due to the cost of securing the music rights.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wonder_Years)

I guess this makes sense, the music from era was a critical element of the programme and securing the rights would be complicated to say the least. I guess we should be grateful that people have made the effort to upload Wonder Years content to YouTube.

Blackberry Intranet Portal

2009-04-10T15:38:00.003+12:00

Last night I knocked together a portal for my company intranet designed for our Blackberry mobile devices. There is nothing overly complicated about this when you are using Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES). Some simple design considerations are obviously required and I managed to produce a good result for a version 0.1 portal by just using the most basic html tags, just like it was 1996.

The complicating factor was that I use Windows Integrated Authentication in all parts of the intranet. This is so I can limit sensitive information or experimental features by user groups. The authentication passes nicely through the IIS web server to SQL Server so I can control data access in a granular way as required.

I didn't want my BB users to have to log on through their BB browsers and I didn't just want to start giving permissions to the default IIS anonymous user account. I created a user (domain\mobile) and set it IIS as the user for anonymous browsing for the mobile directory where I had made the BB-specific pages. When I tried to access the pages from either my BB or my laptop's browser, I got an error. Nothing I googled really answered my questions but eventually I figured out that I needed to grant rights for that user on the server (of course the server was a domain controller so I have to use domain security policies). The combination that seemed to work for me was "log on locally", "act as part of the OS" and "log on as a service". One of these may not be required but I was just pleased to have things working.

Now I can give my mobile user permissions that I'm happy for my BB users to have like access to the staff directory and the news service.

Update

2009-01-23T09:17:00.002+13:00

Here is a quick update for my public:
- Went to Tokyo from Xmas Day to New Years Day. Enjoyed it.
- Trying hard not to like Lady Gaga but not succeeding.
- Still have a real job.
- Haven't used sunscreen all summer.
- Playing Attack (Risk) on Facebook lots.

LisaNova

2008-08-03T14:27:00.002+12:00

I suggest that you all check out LisaNova on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/LisaNova

The One When Gareth Talks About the Football

2008-07-22T07:33:00.003+12:00

Went to the pre-season game between Phoenix FC and the Central Coast Mariners. Fantastic. "Same old Aussies, always cheating." A gripping 1-0 victory to the home team.

Plug

2008-07-11T20:50:00.001+12:00

I don't think I've told my public that I am officially a fan of Monocle magazine. Well, I am.

Odd

2008-07-11T20:44:00.002+12:00

I'm feeling good. Tracey things it might be because I'm not driving. She may be right. I had a trip to Auckland this week and not even that could get me down.

Work is going well. I'm being super productive. That has a lot to do with having a new, competent employee. This has meant I can delegate chunks of my workload and focus on where I add the most value.

Our new place in town is just great. Can't beat the location. There is a pretty good view and we are keeping it clean and almost tidy.

Seeing family in Hamilton next week. Mum is flying over for the week and I am going up for a night to catch up with her and the rest of the clan.

Google Reader Mobile on My BlackBerry

2008-06-25T10:14:00.001+12:00

Oh what an age we live in. Not only can I blog from the train I can also keep up with my favourite bloggers.

Charlie Wilson's War

2008-06-23T19:44:00.001+12:00

I saw the movie and I'm reading the book. I like the story for a number or reasons: the larger than life characters, the real-life adventure story and the insights into the workings of the CIA and US government. It' very easy to be a little smug reading it and knowing what happened to Afghanistan after the US lost interest.

Test Post from my BlackBerry

2008-06-23T08:15:00.002+12:00

Now I can neglect my blog from anywhere.

Workaholic

2008-06-08T15:27:00.003+12:00

Somebody called me a workaholic today. Perhaps the fact that I am working on a Sunday that happens to be my birthday and emailing people about the work has something to do with it. What I find really interesting is that it doesn't matter what time of the day or night or what day of the week it is that I send an email, I almost always get at least one response from my colleagues in a matter of minutes.

This is good in a whole different way

2008-05-09T07:59:00.001+12:00

Explicit Lyrics Warning

More You Tube Goodness

2008-05-08T08:52:00.000+12:00

Blatant Commercialism

2008-03-24T18:52:00.005+13:00

Like most people, I commemorated the death and resurrection of my Lord and Saviour this weekend by spending a ridiculous amount of money. This was partly intentional, partly impulsive. I am quite happy with the CDs that I added to our collection, but slightly concerned at the proportion of country music that is included.

CDs bought this weekend:
- Me First and the Gimme Gimmes ruin Johnny's Bar Mitzvah
- The Juno Soundtrack
- The Oh Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack
- Kingdom Come by Jay-Z
- Anchored in Love (a tribute album for June Carter Cash)
- The album that Loretta Lynn did with Jack White
- An album of old gospel songs by Loretta Lynn

Monthly Update?

2007-11-29T15:18:00.000+13:00

It's been over a month since my last post. There is not much to report. Work continues to be primarily working for the one company. There are still moves to employ me rather have me contracting, which I am open to, but not totally enthusiastic about. The reality it that I let the rest of my work slip by the wayside along with networking on my own behalf, so a normal job would reflect the situation. It would be nice to have it sorted one way or the other by Xmas. There is a new CEO starting at the company on Monday, which will be interesting at the very least.

On the subject of Xmas, Tracey and I plan to be in Hamilton with my mother's family for a week around Xmas and then probably at my step-mother's family farm near Gisborne around New Years. We will be joined in Hamilton by Tracey's mum. I'm hoping to relax a lot, work a litle and spend lots of time with Tracey. I will read The Economist and novels and maybe some theology texts that I never got around to during the year.

I'm preaching on the 9th, so if you want to see what I make of the second Sunday in Advent, then come to St Mary's, Karori at 10:30. I guarantee a sermon.

I watched the Sarah Silverman show on C4 last night after being intrigued by the adds I have seen for it and looking at some of her material on YouTube. I think that I would quite like the show, but just like the Mighty Boosh, I really can't be bothered going out of my way to watch it.

I'm smoking a lot. Not a lot by smokers' standards, but a lot by mine. It's almost every weekday and normally more than one a day. I'm unsure how I feel about it. It has definitely become a habit. I suspect that it is still not an addiction, based on my previous experience, but time will tell.

My good friend Julia Coleman was ordained a Deacon in the Church (Anglican Division) this month. Out of obligation, I went to the ordination service. Boy did it suck. 2 hours in church of which only about 40 seconds were actaully Julia getting done. I got told off by the Dean for talking near where he was trying to administer communion (Who actually thinks that it's a smart idea to try and distribute the Sacrement via the common cup to 1000 people at one time? Can we not apply technology to this business need?) and generally got very bored. Oddly enough, I actually enjoyed the costume party that night. Tracey and I went as June Carter and Johnny Cash - the theme was Saints and Sinner, so we covered off bother categories at the same time. I have my doubts that I will ever end up ordained, but God is very good at keeping his own counsel.

I plan to do only one Theology paper through Otago next year: a block cource on Christology taught over a week in Wellington. After that, I have the option of stopping my studies and walking away with a Certificate in Theological Studies. That would be an actual tertiary qualification - wow. Nothing like my wonderful wife who has two undergrad degress and now just finished an honours degree, but, actual letters after my name.

That's all for now. Smell ya later.

Arminianism

2007-10-23T12:04:00.001+13:00

Arminianism is not a theology that I had come across until recently. I suspect that it wasn't part of my Reformation studies becuase it was something that grew out of Calvinism and so possibly belongs to the Modern period (or perhaps I wasn't paying attention). I'll let you Google it rather than try to summarise it, but it is doctrine of salvation.

Anyhoo, I suspect that I far more Arminianist than Calvinist. So today, if anyone asks, I think I will call myself an Arminianist Orthodox Evangelical Catholic Christian.

And yet more preaching

2007-10-14T13:34:00.000+13:00

Yes, I am still alive.

I preached at the 8 and 9 am services at St Mary's, Karori this morning. This was my first ever atempt at any sort of planned public speaking without notes. I have had feed back that my previous preaching efforts relied a little too much on note reading so I decided to do away with them completely.

I got to choose my reading from Acts 6, so I went with v1-7 as an excuse to diverge off into some more church history, asking the question "can we see God at work in the history of the Church?" I looked at some examples including the choosing of the seven from the reading and pointed out some ways in which these very human-looking situations could actually reflect God at work.

Sadly, none of my material was anywhere near controversial, so I'm not expecting any formal complaints this time. I'll try harder in the future.

Good news for a aspiring dirigible operators

2007-09-30T19:03:00.000+13:00

The IRD has a depreciation rate for dirigibles.

Attention iPod owners

2007-08-22T10:29:00.001+12:00

Now, I know there is a plethora of iPod accessories on the market, but this range really appeals to me and I might even be tempted to buy an iPod just to have an excuse to buy.

http://www.fat-man.co.uk

Yes, those are valves.