scams

Yes I have been a bit slack about blogging lately, I have had a lot on. Here is a quick summary of the notable bits.

Car

My car is at the panel beaters. The guy who hit me drove off after I accused him of being drunk. The police have told me that he has been charged with several offences, including careless driving. Julie and Noah were in the car at the time, but they were both ok. My neck still a little sore. It will cost about $8000 to get it fixed. Allianz has been really good so far, one phone call and one visit to the panel beaters and it gets sorted. And of course, here is a pic of the damage This is the second Volvo I have smashed in less than 2 years (I rolled the last one and wrote it off) and escaped with nothing but minor neck injuries. If you are looking at buying a car I would recommend a Volvo 850 Wagon(or V70 / XC70 if you can afford it).

Rental Cars

I have always suspected that there are scams in the car rental business. This was confirmed by Hertz, their "Melbourne Downtown" depot was able to do a Ford Falcon XR6 for under 125AUD for the 3 days, less than half the price of their suburban depots. The second scam is the insurance excess waiver. Having to pay 1500AUD excess regardless of fault forces people to take the reduction waiver. On the positive side, their #1 Club Gold seems ok, so I signed up for free.

Work

I am still working at SGI. Last week I signed another contract extension, which will take me through until 7 September. I am currently in discussions with a company in Europe about a telecommuting role involving phpGroupWare. Things should become clearer before the end of the month - watch this space.

Summer of Code

Johan has cranked out some really nice looking sync code for phpGroupWare. I complete his mid point review a few days ago - I gave him an A. The only real criticism I made was that he should enable comments on his blog. We should get this into CVS some time this week.