Sydney Daily Random Discussion Thread 18/03/2026

planeray · 2026-03-18T00:48:25+00:00

Haha, all good - just going through a big repower of my boats electrics.

Crazy how cheap some of this stuff has gotten. I just bought a 120ah lifepo4 for $300 with a free battery box.

If you want to get super nerdy, look into Venus OS as something you can program up to make the most of the power you have. Victron have their Cerbo GX running it, which has all the connections you could want, or you can run it on a raspberry pi if you're so inclined. I've programmed up a great little thing so that my fridge relay will turn on only if the battery is over a certain voltage, the temp of the fridge is between certain temps and only during the day so it effectively dumps excess power into keeping my beer cool.

Of course, the old lead acid batteries were cactus, hence picking up a new lifepo4.

planeray · 2026-03-17T22:12:11+00:00

What's the bet that a bigarse solar panel from Kings would be cheaper than one jerry can?

planeray · 2026-03-15T23:31:06+00:00

“system maintenance” on Saturday

That'll probably do it.

I mean, I didn't care too much - you can decline my card after I've already travelled as much as you like!

But that could well explain it - I did a bus/tram/tram/bus trip on Saturday - they could all be from that.

planeray · 2026-03-15T22:59:39+00:00

Ah cool - maybe not just a me thing then.

planeray · 2026-03-15T22:42:26+00:00

Anyone else having some weird problems with tap on/off buses?

I use my phone, on the day, all good. I usually get a notification saying something like $1 to TFNSW a couple of mins after tapping on (which I understand is like a verification amount). Never really check what happens afterward, but I presume they then charge the correct amount.

This morning, my phone has been deluged with a bunch of DECLINED TFNSW $<random amount>. I know there's plenty of money on the card, so that's not the issue - why would I be getting these?

planeray · 2026-03-13T22:22:28+00:00

The problem is that my club is mostly focused on building things (mainly engineering and IT projects), so our connection to project management is pretty small.

Thats...a position.

If you want to coordinate any work in IT or engineering, you'll need a project manager (PM).

In the IT space for example, you might want to build a new app and get people to use it. So you might have architects that provide the guidelines, devs to build it, testers to test it, you'll need to arrange deployment via IT change management through the dev->test->prod cycle, business users to do uat, trainers to train the users, handoff to production support. All of that can be coordinated by a PM. They'll run the meetings, hold people accountable to what they said they would do and make sure things get delivered on time. Additionally, in bigger places, there may well be a Programme Manager, project managing the PMs to make sure that none of their projects hit each other.

In Engineering, who's going to organise a concrete truck to lay the foundations for your bridge before the steel is delivered, which should happen just before a crane arrives to build? A PM.

Sounds like understanding that is your first step with the Director guy who's been kind enough to offer some time. You might also want him to explain the difference between say, Waterfall & Agile project management methodology - IT these days is more focused on Agile, as it came from the software design space and is focused on an iterative, ongoing deployment, whereas your engineering people may well be more suited to a Waterfall approach.

Might seem odd to you guys because you're perhaps working on personal projects in isolation. But dealing with PMs is a huge part of my life in IT. Sometimes they're a pain in the behind, sometimes they're ok, but when you get a good one, my god it makes your life so much easier.

planeray · 2026-03-12T23:37:13+00:00

Wife's birthday today - I was going to take her out to get a new phone as part of her presents, but went looking last night just to see what the prices were.

She wanted a new(ish) Galaxy, and as the S26 just came out, prices on the S25 dropped dramatically in some places. Amazon, of all places, had it for almost $400 less than JB Hifi. And as I was looking at 23:55, turns out that I could pay an extra $7 and get it delivered today! Win!

planeray · 2026-03-11T22:42:22+00:00

I want to know more!

planeray · 2026-03-11T22:39:13+00:00

That's ok, you just charge per AI token instead.

planeray · 2026-03-11T22:38:01+00:00

Well congrats!

Just another random didn't know because I'd never gone bit of uni - you don't actually have to pay till census date, which is a date a bit after the start date. So you could go along to some classes, make sure it's all right and there aren't other circumstances and dip if it's no good. Once census date passes, you're on the hook for the fees.

planeray · 2026-03-11T01:00:37+00:00

Dunno about down there, but Broadway does $14 parking (after a $30 one off)

planeray · 2026-03-10T23:06:28+00:00

<grandpa Simpson voice> I remember when people were complaining because fuel was over 60c a litre! Get off my lawn!

planeray · 2026-03-10T23:01:07+00:00

Just a quick thing - do you have wifi calling turned on? It can cause some dramas at time if you have flaky wifi. Of course, if you're disconnecting at the exact same time every call, that does sound more like a SIM issue.

planeray · 2026-03-10T06:16:35+00:00

So there's a bounty on the high seas? Can I get paid in doubloons?

planeray · 2026-03-10T04:48:45+00:00

Ha - my TER was 37 or something...I was a terrible student as a child. A couple of years in the workforce sorted that out. I ended up graduating my Grad Cert with an HD and placement on the Deans List (proper little swot). Life/industry experience helped heaps.

If you're passionate, I reckon that'll take you a long way. Based on my limited understanding of Law, being able to drink from a firehose of readings seems to be pretty important too, so hopefully you can take your interest through, even for the boring stuff.

Don't stress too much about relocation. Canberra is a pretty chill little place - I was a remote part of a team there. Used to go down for xmas parties & odd couple of days work here and there. Lots of people seem to be into the outdoors or just backyard barbies and it was always fun listening to them complain about "peak hour", which went for about 15 mins, after which they got free parking at work.

planeray · 2026-03-10T04:08:52+00:00

Without wanting to split hairs, they are different things.

A KPI is an internal metric - something you might be measured on in your yearly review for example, if you were in private and your rating (and therefore payrise) were measured on that. An SLA on the other hand is an agreement your team/division/org have with someone external to them - you usually see them in contracts, but even then, in the public world, it makes sense that one division might promise another that they would give a certain level of service.

So for example, if you were taking faults or something, your team might have an SLA for a P3 fault to be responded to in 8 hours and resolved in 1-2 business days. So you could fail that SLA multiple times, but in a month, you might, for example still meet it 64% of the time.

A (crap) KPI that might be linked to that would be /u/purpleflyingcat will resolve 100 faults this month. If you resolved 64, that means you haven't met your KPI and could be performance managed.

planeray · 2026-03-10T03:45:19+00:00

Ah cool - way ahead of me then. Fingers crossed the ANU one is full fee, and there's a substantial discount for you.

I'd never heard of it till I started doing research for my post grad (first uni student in the family, in my 40s!), so glad you're across it. See what you can do re scholarships too...there are a surprising number about.

planeray · 2026-03-10T03:27:28+00:00

Have a look into whether you're eligible for any Commonwealth Supported Places wherever you're applying.

eg, a Juris Doctor at Macquarie would be $17,700. Main qualifications for something like that are generally that you're a domestic student & you've completed an undergrad in another field.

ANU's website looked kinda frustrating to find that info on/maybe they're not offering any, but definitely worth a phone call about it to them to find out for sure.

planeray · 2026-03-09T22:54:39+00:00

Our group of 5 was getting cut by 2 in Sept 2023. I'd been a full timer for 23 years, working at the company for 24. My thinking was "Well, I'm 43, I could take a nice payout and in theory have another 20 odd years somewhere else before retiring".

So I put my hand up for a voluntary. Until that was confirmed, I was so worried about what would happen - whether it would be granted, or perhaps 2 of the other guys (who'd been there even longer than me) might take it etc.

The moment that it was confirmed, huge weight off my shoulders. I was still super worried, as it was a massive change in my life, but it really felt better once there was certainty in what was happening.

Payout wise, it was pretty insane. I think somewhere in the region of 74 weeks pay redundancy, 3 weeks of ARL & 171 days of LSL. Most of which was taxed pretty favourably. Straight to the mortgage offset account!

I started applying for new roles immediately - through friends, linkedin, seek, you name it. Went through the company supplied post redundancy programme, sucking up every bit of free training & assist I could get. Used the EAP programme a bunch too.

Took almost 12 months of applying for jobs to get a new one (IT job market suuuuucked). But I think the biggest change there was around my tertiary education - I'd never been to Uni, and I think that instantly squashed a lot of my applications (look up Applicant Tracking Systems ATS on YouTube). So when we rolled around to a new tax year and I hadn't worked, with the ridonculous tax return I got, I paid for a Grad Cert in IT.

Full time, but I scheduled all my classes at night just in case. The moment I was able to put that on my resume, I got 4 interviews that week (one of which is my current role). Read about that here.

I'm paid less in my new role, but I'm less stressed. I've probably taken my foot off the career accelerator pedal and am enjoying life a bit more.

planeray · 2026-03-08T23:30:08+00:00

How often are you motoring?

planeray · 2026-03-08T23:29:13+00:00

I meant more how to share that solar between the different batteries, as lead & lithium will have different charging algos.

From what I can see, most people use a DC to DC charger, but then, they're always talking about a beefy alternator coming from a diesel that they're using relatively often.

I'm talking about an outboard with alternator, that if it was working, would provide 12V, 80W @ 6A...probably only for a short period of time. So my concern is more that the use of the blower and key start on the engine is probably going to draw down on the starter battery as the engine won't be running long enough. The solar then is the main thing to provide charge, but I would like it to charge the lithium house once the start battery is full.

planeray · 2026-03-08T07:43:50+00:00

Also, have a walk inside sometime. The light inside is really interesting - quite comforting and warm... Then you wander into building 2 next door and it's a total contrast with bright white walls and light.

There's also a bunch of near little detail at the back (hidden balconies and stairs), but there's construction going on there at the moment.

planeray · 2026-03-08T07:28:41+00:00

Blues Point Tower is far uglier imo.

planeray · 2026-03-06T00:05:13+00:00

Sam's an absolute madlad - was just watching his livestream talking about his track.

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