Red ones are faster, right?

So I had a saved trademe search. Mini, 2010 or later, manual. That was as specific as I could make it, because you can't really search on the letter 'S'.

Results always include other models, Mini One's, Clubmans, Crossovers, etc. Then this one popped up that ticked all the right boxes. 2012 Mini Cooper S. It was built in late 2011, so it's an LCI (BMW's designation for facelifted models), which means it has the N18 motor. NZ new, relatively low mileage, 83000Kms, with MFSW (Multifunction steering wheel) and Bluetooth. A lot (and I mean nearly all) Japanese imports are not specified with Bluetooth, so this is a big tick.

But it's red. Hmmm. Not my first choice. I'd really prefer black, Dark Grey or Dark Blue.

But it does have a black roof which, in my opinion, is infinitely better than the Red/White roof combination. It also has a set of black JCW wheels. They're only 16", which is a shame. The interesting thing is that, according to the VIN, it was originally specified with 17" black, Mini curved spoke wheels. I have heard they are more comfortable on 16's than 17's, so maybe that's why they have been swapped. They do look good, though.

The guy who was selling it, got it from his Mum, who was the original purchaser. Full service history, which included replacement of the high pressure fuel pump and the thermostat housing, which are the two things most likely to go wrong with the N18 variant.

So a deal was struck, and I'm now the proud owner of a Red/Black 2012 MCS.

All is at peace in the world.

By the way. These are my, not very good attempts at some more "artful" car photographs. I definitely need more practice. And to find better locations.

Rubbing salt in the wound.

Do you ever feel like the universe is laughing at you?

My son has just bought his first car. A 2011 BMW 320i wagon. Not only is this a way nicer car than my first car, it's way nicer than my current car. This won't do.

Let me backtrack a bit.

My 18 year old son and 16 year old daughter are both learner drivers. Ethan is on his restricted and Ashley is on her learners licence. My mother-in-law can no longer drive, so she has gifted her 2014 Suzuki Swift to the kids. Ethan had been using it to drive to work, and Ashley is still dependant on us to get to and from School.

As great as the Swift is, it's not the best vehicle for Ethan who is over 6 feet tall. To keep things fair and equitable, the mother-in-law is paying an appropriate sum towards a car for Ethan. So Ashley will get the Swift to herself and Ethan has been hunting for a car. We are very lucky, I know.

So can I get my mini now? Well, no. After some unexpected, but very necessary house repairs, it's not really an option at the moment.

Sigh.

My heart is broken and my automotive dreams lie in tatters.

Let me explain.

I love Minis. I always have.

I didn't quite learn to drive in one, but I spent my later teens driving my friends around in my parents little blue mini, getting up to mischief (automotive and otherwise). As you do.

The second car I owned was a Mini. A 1976, Australian, Leyland Mini S that I bought of our neighbour. Sort of like a clubman, with some unique bits that only Aussie Minis had. Like doors with a pocket and wind up windows and quaterlight windows, and lift up external door handles. When I got it, the rings were shot, and there was no synchro left in third gear. That's how I learned to heel-and-toe, as the only way to change down from fourth to third, was to rev match and bang it home. I swapped the tired mechanicals for a reconditioned 1275 motor and a gearbox from a Morris 1300GT, in the garage of my girlfriend's house. Her dad and his mechanic friend who lived across the road helped me with the swap.

I drove the snot out of that thing until it started to cost me more in rust repairs than insurance payments.

Now the missus reckons it's time to give "Stinky" (my 2006 Honda Fit) the flick for something with less Kms. I really like the Fit, it's been relatively reliable. In the six years I've owned it, the only work I've had to do is replace the rear hubs (one of the bearings started to get real noisy) and I've just replaced the front brake rotors as they developed a brake shudder. Probably as a result of activating ABS in anger one morning on the way to work, as the plonker in front of me decided to stop in the middle of a roundabout.

Ever since BMW bought out the new mini, I've kind of wanted one. I've never driven one, I think I'd never been a passenger in one, except for a two or three minute blast around a carpark at a car show, years ago. But they've always been too expensive, and too impractical. I couldn't imagine trying to get young kids into a carseat in the back of a mini. When I sold my Mini, I bought a four door car as we were starting a family. But now, you can get a relatively low Km (ie less than 100K) R56 Cooper S for about the same as I paid for the Fit six years ago, and car seats are a thing of the past (my kids are 16 and 17 years old, now).

So, in the weekend, we took a 2008 Mini Cooper S for a testdrive.

Wow! Colour me impressed. That is a seriously quick car. I know the N14 turbo version is rated at 173 horsepower, but I was just not prepared for how it delivered that power. I was blown away by how quick that thing accelerated. It's been a long time since I've driven a turbocharged car. The first car I owned was a Honda City Turbo II. I know, a completely ridiculous choice for a first car. The turbo lag and the way the boost came on, made it an excercise in tourquesteer and wheelspin, and if you (unwisely) decided to change gear mid corner when driving, um... spiritedly, shall we say, it wasn't adverse to sudden, clutch-in oversteer. Oh, and it was such an unsafe feeling car. It was exceedingly light and at any speed over 100km/h (say when overtaking), the tops of the doors flexed so much, you could hear the rubber door seals sealing and unsealing. Very disconcerting. We took to calling it the pregnant rollerskate.

The Mini, on the other hand, was planted, and surefooted in a way I haven't experienced since my old Mini days. I enjoyed every second of the drive.

Sold.

Except for one minor detail.

There is no possible way that I could take both kids to school in that car. I'm just under 6'3" tall, my son is within an inch of that, which leaves almost zero rear legroom. I mean, zero. Even with his knees mashed into the dash, my daughter couldn't physically get into the seat behind him.

To say I'm gutted is an understatement.

So, for now, the Mini remains an impractical dream. Unless one of the kids had their own transport.

"Son. I think it's time you got yourself a part-time job...."

Hard drive failure, Pop-punk posturing and a walk down the other side of the Youtube street.

I don't usually write posts like this, but hey, lockdown right?

I like to listen to a wide variety of music, and although I'm embracing the digital age, I'm still old school enough to prefer to own the music I listen too. I don't do spotify, and sorry, but a phone, even a really expensive phone, can't do justice to a decent high quality flac. A while back I got a Digital Audio Player. It's a music player that plays high quality, lossless digital music.

So I ripped every CD I own to flac, and curated a nice collection to fit on the 64GB micro SD card that I've got in my player. I have a staging directory where I copy the files to, make any playlists I decide I want, then copy it to the SD card. I have to do this every couple of months as the SD card gets corrupted. Weird artifacts in the songs, skipping, drop outs. It's incredibly frustrating. I suspect it's the card. Serves me right for not stumping up the cash for a decent (SanDisk) SD card.

Then the hard drive my staging directory was on died. Not only was my staging directory gone, but about 60% of my digital music files. Crap. Luckily, most were ripped from CD's, but a few were purchased digitally. So I've been dutifully re-ripping all my CD's and sourcing replacements for the other albums. A good way to kill some time during lockdown.

I'm taking this "opportunity" to expand my music collection, too. I kind of missed the whole Pop-Punk thing the first time around, but I'm really discovering a liking for it. Both the original early 2000's Pop-Punk and the resurgance of Pop-Punk in 2009/2010 that spawned a new crop of Pop-Punk bands. I was aware of, and liked those artists and songs that acheived some mainstream success back in the day, such as Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Wheezer, Good Charlotte and Blink-182. Since delving into the genre, I've discovered a slew of bands worth listening to, such as All Time Low, New Found Glory, Yellowcard, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World and The Ataris. Plus a few more that I would consider Pop-Punk Adjacent. Hey Monday, Automatic Loveletter, VersaEmerge, We The Kings, Icon for Hire, Tonight Alive, We Are The In Crowd. Unfortunately, as I'm late to the party, the less mainstream bands are almost impossible to get on CD, which is frustrating. Some of the more commercially sucessful bands can be found, though, so now I'm scouring online music stores for original copies of My Chemical Romance and Green Day CD's

For all the kids, I guess spotify is how they find new music. Since I don't really "do", spotify, and I'm looking for music that is new to me, rather than new music, Youtube is my go to source.

I have noticed that smashing instruments seems to be over represented in this genre. Hell, even My Chemical Romance gave it go in "Famous Last Words". I'm not a fan. I find it a bit cringeworthy actually. It might have been De Rigueur for Punk bands in the 70's, but doing it in a music video in the 2000's or 2010's just feels trite and contrived. I'm not talking about smashing instruments on stage. That's a whole other conversation. I'm talking about doing it in a music video. I get that some, well probably most, of these bands are trying to shake off the "Pop" part of Pop-Punk, but, c'mon people, it's the new Millenium. It's been done before and it doesn't make you edgy. I think it's entirely uneccessary. Except for this one music video, where it's actually epic, but in a totally different way. Hopeless Wanderer, by Mumford & Sons. Yep, you read that right, Mumford & Sons. You should go and watch this video now. Forget Ozark. THIS, is Jason Bateman's best work.

Which brings me to my last point. It's pretty easy to fall down the youtube rabbit hole, especially when trying to find, less mainstream music. There's a wealth of talented musicians across every genre. Then there's the genres you didn't think could ever exist.

Some weird, like the Finnish band that do bluegrass covers of AC/DC. I can call that a genre, because there's also an American band, Hayseed Dixie, that do pretty much the same thing (they even put out a whole album), and then there's Nanowar of Steel, an italian comedy heavy metal band making fun of Nordic heavy metal (check out Norwegian Reggaeton WTF?). But there's also some really interesting ones. Prety much anything by Postmodern Jukebox, cross-genre covers like Leo Moracchioli's metal covers and Ali Spagnola's highly entertaining and creative covers. (Ali is one of my favourite content creators, she's soooo enthusiatic and has a wicked sense of humour and her videos are really fun, if you are at all interested in music). I've recently discovered Ganstagrass (which is bluegrass music, with a Hip Hop beat and rapping, and is way more awesome than it sounds).

Don't be afraid to delve into the more obscure fringes music on youtube. Let your mouse (and your mind) wander. You never know what you just might find.

Oh, and speaking of AC/DC covers, I leave you with this gem, Shoot To Thrill by Halestorm. Which has to be, the most on-point AC/DC cover ever made.

Ever. (Lzzy Hale is a rock godess!)

Sad news, reflections and a poignant co-incidence

In January next year, I will have been in the same role for 18 years. In 2001, I was 30 years old, starting in this team in, essentially, a Windows Desktop Support role. At that time, I had several years experience in the IT sector. I had worked in a small business, writing and supporting business software (written in Foxpro, BTW) and then Windows support roles for about 5 years.

We were a team of nine, then. There were 3 linux admins. John and Baz were the core of the Linux infrastructure, and then Dax made the switch from Windows support and joined them.

Then, in 2005 I think it was, the company John's partner worked for closed their Hamilton office and consolidated their operations in Auckland, so John headed off to the big smoke. Within nine months, both Dax and Baz had also found new jobs and moved on.

So there we were. We had become a team of six, with no Linux administrators and a linux infrastucture supporting most of the faculty. Suddenly, we had a surplus of Windows support people and a dearth of Linux admins. As last one in, I was in a slightly tenuous position. My boss asked me to make the switch to being a Linux sysadmin. I like to think he saw the potential in me, but maybe that's wishful thinking. So, almost overnight, I went from being a Windows support person with almost no server experience, to being responsible for the Linux infrastructure for an entire faculty. NIS, NFS, mail, imap, apache web servers, Tivoli storage manager and a tape library for backups. I eventually came to hate that tape library (it liked to drop tapes on a regular basis).

Luckily, one of my colleagues (who is now my manager) had some extensive Sun experience, so I leaned on him pretty heavily in the beginning.

Then we hired another team member with a wealth of experience in Linux systems administration.

Since then, between the two of us, we have ditched NIS for LDAP, setup synching between LDAP and our AD, changed the distribution we use on the desktop from Gentoo, to CentOS, to Ubuntu, setup puppet for configuration management and then changed to saltstack, commissioned three SAN appliances and a NAS, made excursions into OpenStack and VMWare and made countless other changes and improvements to our infrastructure. IT is a business of change and where we are today is vastly different to how things were then.

Mostly.

Today we received the sad news that John passed away yesterday.

I haven't seen him in almost 15 years, but today was a difficult day. In some ways, John leaving our team was the catalsyt for change that lead me to where I am today. I'm proud of what we have acheived over the years and the improvements we have made, but our accomplishments are built on the foundation our predecessors left us.

To reinforce that fact, today I was working on modifying the script that creates users' homes. We are gearing up for another major change and that's one of the many things that needs to be updated. It makes use of a little service that quietly sits on one of our servers and presents an interface to our corporate data (user information, essentially). That service has been changed very little since I've been working here, and it is something that is utilised almost every day.

I looked at that script today. I needed to verify one aspect of how it worked.

It's a perl script. Originally written in 2004. By John.

It's also full of his comments. He had strong views on coding style and program structure and wasn't afraid to pepper his code with "helpful" suggestions.

So a little piece of John lives on in our systems. On the surface, it does what it's meant to do, admirably, dependably, but if you scratch the surface, and look a little more deeply, it's infused with John's unique point of view and his relentless humour.

I'm pretty certain none of my scripts will still be in use 15 years after I've left here.

#  Name:      repoqueryd.pl
#  Authors:   John Newman
#  Created:   24 August 2004

Rest easy, mate.