Financal Advisor
Arranged to have a chat with a financial advisor from our bank, since we're looking at investments and are very happy to be given advice. Financial advisors usually have a 'first meeting is free' policy, and this one was no exception.

I've never seen a financial advisor before, so I brought along balance sheets and profit-and-loss statements, although these didn't really end up getting used after we finished going through verbal summaries of positions.

I didn't expect much for a free consultation, and what advice I did receive wasn't a surprise. If you're looking at investing for growth over the long term, then there are these things called shares and property that have been traditionally good investments. Property is a bit overpriced right now, and shares may or may not be. You can invest in managed funds if you want someone else to do the management for you, and gee, we've got some great managed funds here at XYZ bank. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Didn't learn anything particularly new, and I'm not sure if I should be encouraged or dissapointed by this. I think overall I was dissapointed.

Any advisor/advice will need to jump a fairly simple hurdle. I need to feel that that the advice that I gain is going to be worthwhile based upon the time and money spent. If the advice means that I'll gain an extra $500/yr from investments, but costs me $1000/yr in fees and time, then it's not very useful advice.

Recommending managed funds that invest in Australian shares and will a decent history of returns isn't what I consider valuable advice, since I can make those determinations myself.

I'll try another financial advisor or two, just to make sure they'll all saying the same thing. However I won't be holding my breath to expect any great revelations.

Windows Security Updates
Installing security updates under Windows XP is easy. One or two confirmations (or none at all, if configured to run automatically) and the updates are downloaded, verified, and installed. That's good.

Once the updates are installed, in long-standard Windows tradition you're requested to reboot your machine for changes to take effect. The user is presented with the options of 'Now' or 'Later'.

Unfortunately, choosing 'Later' causes Windows to regularly pop-up a window into the middle of the desktop which steals focus. It asks if the user is ready to reboot, again with choices of 'Now' or 'Later'. The botton marked 'Later, when I select that option manually from the menu' is conspicuously missing.

When a focus-stealing window appears without warning, it's pretty easy to find oneself rebooting by accident. That's Bad, and very annoying when one is trying to work.

There's got to be a way to turn the reboot reminders off, right? Right?

December 2004 diving Photos on-line
Some underwater photographs from our 2004 diving trip are now on-line.

I could have sworn that I edited them pretty heavily, but it seems I still ended up with 166 photographs in total.

The album software I'm using needs a few tweak. In particular the return to index links will take you back to the first page (not usually what you want), and navigation links are not appearing on the top of the index pages.

The quality of photos varies somewhat, and many of the better ones are near the end -- our photography skills got better as time went on.

Company Tax
Our company tax return is only four pages long, so at a glance it looks like it should be fairly straightforward. The booklet on how to fill it in is only 116 pages, most of which doesn't apply to us; that's even better. It's only once you realise that the booklet is simply a reference to a great many rulings, fact sheets, case files, laws, and other publications that it becomes apparent that everything is not quite as straightforward as it first seems.

Development - Undesirable work
I'm trying to change the make-up of work that I'm regularly doing. My goal is to do more training, more course development, a few more apperances at conferences, and less development.

Despite the fact that I really do enjoy development (and testing and even documentation), the process around it is not very enjoyable. For a start not many clients actually have a good idea of what they want. Often they want a system that replaces an existing way of doing things, but actually getting them to explain that current process can be nigh impossible. Either they don't have a good process, don't understand it, consider it obvious, or just don't see why it's relevant.

All of these are hurdles that can be overcome, but they all take time, and for some clients it takes longer than others. Depending upon the client there may also be other struggles -- in some cases large amounts of paperwork and contracts, or dealing with whoever looks after their system to get things installed.

None of these are surprises, anyone who's been in the software engineering business for any length of time should know about and expect the gauntlet of processes that are required to get a system produced for your average non-technical customer. However just because they're expected doesn't mean I enjoy them, and I value enjoyment of my work quite highly.

Technical customers are a little different, since they usually don't want to outsource their development, or when they do they already have a very good idea about what needs to be done. My experience with technical customers is that I'm usually brought in (on-site) for a few days to solve a specalist problem, hunt and kill well-defined bugs, or implement a well-scoped project. Furthermore they can usually make their own improvements and bugfixes once the hard part is over.

So training and 'consulting' for technical clients usually has excellent closure, but development for non-technical clients certainly does not. Good closure is very satisfying -- you can finish a job, know that you've done a good job, and go home with a clear mind.

However poor closure usually means lots of ongoing work and revenue streams, as the client keeps coming back for more improvements and additions. I'm not bothered by this, we have an excellent turnover on courses, regular work from other sources, and the reward for effort on development work is much lower than our other categories.

The hardest thing will be saying 'no' to work. I've never been very good at that.