I really love technology. The way it simplifies your life and makes it more complicated at the same time. Ingenious.

I also love mobile phones. Not to talk on but to do the other things that mobiles do, like: GPS’ing, texting, photo’ing, facebook’ing, ad infinitum.

The only problem that I have is that the week after I get a new mobile, on the generic 24 month plan, I’m bored with the phone. I start reading reviews about the new Nokia N96 or the Apple iPhone or blah, blah, blah. But now I’m really interested. Google has a phone.

A mobile phone operating system to be more accurate. HTC just released the G1. But of course it’s going to take ages to get down under. So depression ensues, ya da ya da. Then along comes Mr Kogan. The entrepreneurial type with some big ideas and he decides to fast track the Google thing down under.

Pop on over to Kogan’s site and check out their Agora Google Android mobile in two flavours. They seem pretty cheap too.

For some that is. Any freebies Mr Kogan? Damn that 24 month plan!

There are puppies and then there are Staffies. The super muscled English Staffordshire Bull Terrier to be exact. They’ve got big heads, big mouths, and big strength. But behind all that is a dog more lovable than any other. Super protective, loves kids, and has the biggest smile in the whole of dogdom.

Ours is 12 weeks old and is just gorgeous. She bounds around the place and then collapses for long, extended sleeps. Oh yeah, she also managed to snap our perspex doggie door in half by running through it full pelt. She didn’t even blink.

That’s when I came across the great folks at Pet Wares Plus. After a quick google search for the model of the doggie door I came across these guys. Their website had the same model and each individual part all available online. I was expecting to have to buy a whole new doggie door costing over $100 but these folks got me out of jail for just over $20. They even gave me the option of a flexible version of the door that should be more Staffie proof.

Instead of ordering online I decided to head on over to their store. What a great experience. Lovely staff. Knowledgeable, funny and passionate.

It’s great to be able to support the little guy, the corner store. If ever you need peed “stuff”, try these guys.

I found this on Youtube. Scary indeed.

Just some food for thought.

Some days you just feel that you’re chasing your own tail. Just about every shift (of late) we get called to do a welfare check. Normally it’s an old timer that’s pressed their medical alarm button or their family has called for an ambulance because they haven’t been able to contact them by phone. Today was no exception.

We knocked on the door and got no reply. There was a key lock in his meter box and we had the code. We unlocked his door and began the room to room search for the patient. Sometimes you find the old timer in bed having departed this mortal coil but, as in this case, most of the time they’ve left the house and bumped the alarm button on the way out the door.

We turned off the toilet light to offset the carbon emissions it cost us to get to him and left him a note saying that we’d raided his place. We spoke to the traditional nosey parkers across the road and to the lovely neigbours next door and left.

Fifteen minutes later we were back in our area having just exited the new tollway when we received another job almost from where we’d just been. Chasing that proverbial tail indeed. This time it was for a two car collision under the new tollway. Multiple patients. Where the hell were the ambulances from that area?

We flicked on the beacons and headed back onto the tollway, exiting about 100 metres from the accident. Windscreen assessment showed a nasty t-bone. B-pillar. All patients out of the car. Sweet.

That’s when we met Clair*. Clair, her mum and another sibling had been in the car that had been t-boned. All had minor injuries but for the sake of keeping them together we popped them all in to the one ambulance.

Clair had a nice shiner and some hip pain but just refused to complain. She asked first about how her mum was and then how her sister was. She sat in a seat by herself and chatted to my partner for the whole journey. She told him about her friends and how she was in the school play the previous night. And she just refused to complain.

I later found out that she had been fighting a tumour for some time. It was in her brain and most of it had been removed after multiple surgeries. She told me that she’d had 9 MRIs and was due to have another next week. She said that the first time she was terrified but now she could watch a DVD during the scan. That made it better. And her mum stayed in the room as well.

Then came the story of the laptop. Clair had asked her mum to grab a laptop that had been in the car. The screen now had a crack in it and the screen hinge broken. Her mum then told me that the Make a Wish foundation had given it to her because that’s what she’d always wanted.

I met a really cool kid today. She was totally selfless, totally caring, and totally funny. Let’s just hope that she meets a electronics or computer store that’s cool enough to look after her and repair the computer for her. She so deserves it.

It was an honour to meet you Clair. People like you make being a paramedic a privilege.

*Not the patients real name.

DD-WRT gives you something for nothing. Unusual to be sure in this day and age. Here’s a little tale about how it can be so.

At one end of my house is a Billion wireless router that serves the internet up to a PC attached to the router’s wired LAN ports. The laser printer connects to the Billion as well. The Billion then spits the internet via WiFi to the kitchen where my laptop connects to a fairly strong signal.

At the other end of the house is our games room with its resident Nintendo Wii. WiFi enabled but not able to pick up a signal from the Billion.

As a result of changing internet providers to an ADSL 2+ connection we changed to a router that incorporated an ADSL 2+ modem. The Billion. As a result our old Asus WiFi router became an orphan. Discarded on to the tech junk pile.

Enter DD-WRT.

I had done some research into bigger antennas and signal boosters and found them all to be either too big or too expensive. I looked at some WiFi repeaters and the price was abhorrent. Then courtesy of a lucky Google search I found DD-WRT.

DD-WRT as it turns out can transform some old routers into high end routers featuring a repeater bridge mode and other expensive features such as quality of service.

Finding the correct version was simple as pie. With a listing of compatible routers found here.

The setup was also almost painless and the wiki located here has so many tutorials about the various functions it’s just not funny.

Congratulations to the DD-WRT community. Amazing job.

Do yourself a favour and give it a go especially if you’re having trouble with your wireless router. This open source product may just give you back you sanity.

Drop us a line and let us know how you got on with DD-WRT. Cheers.