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With the silly season well and truly over, it's time to work again. In keeping with our sheep wheat history, we headed out into WA's wheat belt. Endless fields of stubble over a landscape of sand and clay, with an occasional granite outcrop. It's a wonder they can grow anything on such ground. Every now and then there is the red bark and bright green foliage of a majestic Salmon Gum.
Salinity problems are blatantly obvious, forming huge scars on the landscape. Equally obvious is where the LandCare dollars are being spent. If they keep up the plantings for a few decades, they may begin to have an impact. We stopped in to a local LandCare group, for a quick update about other issues our potential customers are dealing with. In addition to salinity, acid soil and wind erosion top the list.
The most well known granite outcrop in the area is Wave Rock in Hyden. It is also the largest, and by constructing a small (and ugly) concrete wall around it's edge, it has been turned into a mini catchment. While interesting to look at, it is no match for the advertising hype.
We spent a week touring the area, checking out the towns, locating the various computer businesses, and finding the areas where services were absent.
Along the way we spread the word of our presence.
We managed to pick up enough work to cover the cost of the fuel, and schedule a few training classes.
The WA government took up the funding challenge when the Federal government dropped the ball. As a consequence, the Telecentres here are all still operating, and new ones continue to open. The practical upshot is that the communities over here have much better access to services that their counterparts in eastern states.
Sony's promised 2 day turnaround on the dead laptop ends up more like 2 weeks, but we're not surprised. With the laptop heading back to Perth, so did we. Return to a fixed location also gives us the chance to get another mail drop. We might even be able to pick up a new battery for the printer. With those objectives are achieved, it's back out into the wheatbelt for more work.
The caravan park has a little green grass, enough shade, and a lovely view of the forgotten trademark. There are plenty of birds, including miners, wattlebirds, galahs, and ringneck parrots. It's also right beside the council depot, and at ungodly hours it provides noises reminiscent of our stay in Bourke.
In Kondinin, we also experienced our first decent rain in a very long time. The tent even leaked a little. The salt pans around the area are now temporary lakes. Despite the relief of the rain, it has been hot. Fortunately, our tent is just a block from the local swimming pool, making it easy to cool off when we're not working.
Word of mouth is a funny thing. At 6:30 one morning we got a call from a man on the east coast. He'd heard we were "pretty good" and we lived nearby. Could fix his computer? He was a bit disappointed to learn that we were a few thousand kilometers away.
We've had enough work among these towns to keep us occupied. Just when we think there is going to be a lull, another job comes up. The rain has given the brown fields a tinge of green. Some severe southerly winds are giving the big tent a pounding it hasn't had since Wycheproof. Some cloud and drizzle combines with the wind to make us wonder where summer has gone.
The DVD in the Sony enables us to rent and watch movies for the first time in our adventure. It also exposes us to the fascist region coding crap that big media use to enhance funding for their massive executive salaries. Talk about inbuilt obsolescence. You can change the region code 5 times, and then you're stuck with the last region. God forbid that in this modern age people might want to travel between regions! Worse still, when they repaired the drive, they used up some of our alloted changes. At least Alan Fels beat them in court and kept mod chips legal in this country.
Hyden telecentre runs Windows and Office XP, so the classes had to be rewritten to suit. (What a waste of effort that was!) It did however force us to fully immerse ourselves in the latest Microsoft offerings on the new Sony. While people who have never used a computer before may benefit from one or two of the changes, they just get in the way of anyone familiar with earlier versions.
Some of the changes in Windows XP are actually improvements. The improved startup time is a major plus, as is CD burning direct from Explorer (despite the significant limitations). Office XP is however another bloated and unnecessary upgrade.
The activation garbage in the XP suite is more fascist crap from big business. Unlike the DVD region coding, at least the activation concept seeks to protect a valid business premise. It's still an inappropriate curtailment of consumers rights, that does little to stop software piracy. Unfortunately the US Justice system is not as effective as our ACCC.
We've also been tinkering with the latest SuSe Linux release on the Sony. It may not have the polish of a Microsoft offering, but it is getting pretty close. It has more features than Microsoft's best offering, at less than half the price of their worst. Just like the Beta/VHS battle, there is no reason to expect that the best will win.