Office Refit – Wanaka Wastebusters
Jan0
Mooted quite a few months ago I finally managed to find an accomplice, the extraordinary Gutter Man – Tony McCutheon aka Gromme, and get the office refit project for Wastebusters well underway last week.
The goal was to increase the productivity of the office space by providing storage for each work space and some division between them. I adopted a rule of 1m3 storage per 1m of desk space, which is a lot but reflects the fact that the office space is connected to the best second hand shop in ~ Wanaka? The world?
Storage is provided by the vertical cases which also split up the desk space. The traffic way around the central island is also now blocked to provide a private (Simon!) workspace. Walkways only work if there is enough room to transit without interrupting which there wasn’t in this case.
All construction is from seconds 15mm plwood from Trademe, some of which was… er… very second rate. To be expected I guess. It all screwed with superscrews so it can be re-configured or dismantled easily at a later date.
Below is the quick Sketchup representation I did to convince everybody it would work, and below that some pictures of it in progress.
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- New printer station with paper and toner storage above
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- Before - all deskspace is linked and storage is mostly under desks.
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- During refot - Storage towers are in place and extra shelving.
Arrowtown house insulation installation underway
Dec0
My major project the last few months at Wastebusters has been Energyhouse - a new house insulation business for Otago. This has involved building the budgets and business from scratch (with able help from Uncle Gary of CBEC), creating the branding stuff and liaising with the Otago Regional Council Clean Heat program.
Last week we completed our first, underfloor and ceiling insulation, projects in Arrowtown. I can report underfloor for 6 hours in a 450mm crawlspace with spiders and sharp bits of wood and tin for company is pretty grim; it was only made bearable by the wit of Gromme and the brilliant Novatherm product, no nasty Pink Batt dust, no nails glue or staples! More about it later.
Fenestration fustration – antivirus
Nov0
I would rather be worrying about windows of a glass variety – but in order to design on a computer I accept there is a maintenance cost. My Windows XP T61p is slower, mainly due to a full disk, than ever and I hate over bloated antivirus software that advertises to you at every opportunity (in this case Avira).
I have always thought good antivirus should be part of an operating system, after all who knows the internal workings of a platform better than the developer? It has always irked me that after buying Windows you then have to buy or find a kindly free provider for a key operating system component – protection from virus’s.
Over the years I have used a paid for Nortons license (horrible and slow), a free AVG edition (actually quite good) and a free Avira (German software? Had to try it but horrible popup ads). So it was with pleasure I installed Windows Security Essentials a few weeks ago, its small, fast and unobtrusive. And totally free – ie: no ads. I then went on to replace Nod32 on 8 computers saving Wastebusters $400 a year. So far the experience has been exceptional.
I also disabled the Client Security Solution in the Bios which has made a small difference.
Journeys in the world of VOIP
Sep0
So…the VOIP project for Wanaka Wastebusters continues. Most of the bases have been covered in the last few weeks:
- Tested the Kiwilink service with a variety of hardware and software phones. PAP2T, X-Lite etc. Call quality is very good 90% of the time and choppy around 4pm…hmmm…hopefully a new ADSL link fullspeed in both directions will solve that
- Have setup auto attendant features and voicemail, nice and easy
- Blind transferring a call has been a bit more of an issue. In X-Lite it is disabled in the free version and PAP2T’s don’t seem to have a good speed dial method. Kiwilink has been exceptional in trying to find a solution – so far the easiest seems to be to use dedicated VOIP phones over ATA’s with analogue phones – will up the investment price a bit
One of the outcomes for me has been to see how VOIP technology, maybe technology in general, has evolved over time. The standards and even the hardware has been around for a few years but it has still not bedded in as a simple flexible solution: system components require extensive configuration, quality is variable and trouble shooting still an art not a science.
Depolying a VOIP PBX is not yet a turn key industry, but the advantages still greatly outweigh the disadvantages.
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