Manda QoP

Had an email from the PC supplier. My spiffy new PC should arrive tomorrow. Yay! I'm happier than a Tigger on E.

YAY! My 70-448 Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance self-paced training kit arrived this morning from Amazon. Still a bit peeved at having to buy it myself, but on the plus side, that does mean it's mine to keep. :-)

Friday Friday night I headed on over to Cassette9, Auckland's new music venue in Vulcan Lane. I was not disappointed. It's a great bar and they've set up the sound really well. You can hear all the instruments - it's great! The bands start late at this venue, reminded me of playing gigs in the UK where as the main band we didn't go on stage until 1am, so if you're into your early nights, possibly not the venue for you. The first band, Clap Clap Riot went on stage around 10.30am. They're really tight with very well structed songs and a lot of energy. The vocalist was a little lacking in dynamism as he mumbled incoherently into the mic between songs, but when playing/singing he was great. F in Math - this is the solo project for the dude from the Mint Chicks. It was O for Awsome. He was totally alienating most of the audience but along with an insane girl who seemed to want to scream at every opportunity, I loved it, just not quite as vociferously....

Check this out for free domain names: http://www.freedomain.co.nr/

The next Auckland Girl Geek Dinner event will be at the end of August, probably the last Thursday. I've got a couple of NetGuide 12 month subscriptions to give away at this event, huge thanks to NetGuide for those. The venue and speakers aren't yet finalised so I will let people know more details when they are available. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow for those of you brave enough to trust us based on previous events. :)

Just had a quick read of this: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html . Question... They're not planning to make the notebooks with this o/s available until the second half of 2010, and they're targetting it at x86 and ARM processors. But isn't x86 on the way out? Surely by 2010/2011 more pc/notebook sales will be 64-bit? Or am I missing something, which is entirely possible given that I read the article at some point near midnight.

It is a black art trying to get the costs right on a development estimate. Too much money and the client will go elsewhere, even if your quote is realistic and reasonable. Too little and you become one of the suppliers the client goes to when the realistic estimate sounds too high. If you're one of the second estimate types, the sort who say it will cost less than it actually will, then you run the risk of not completing the work on time and within budget, you will have stressed out staff and may end up costing your company money instead of making money. So what to do about this? Personally I aim for realistic where possible and include a contingency amount as well just in case of blowouts. I also do a very detailed breakdown in the estimate so the client knows why this project of theirs will take 2000 man hours. So a client has approached you and asks "how much to build this? Just give me a rough estimate of dollar amount and time". You have very little detail, perhaps f...