But back to Singapore. After breakfast, we wandered around the airport.  We caught the skytrain to the other two terminals, had a wander around, continued our search for headphone adaptors, and eventually found a nice coffee place.  Over a coffee we did the readings, and had a nice long discussion about them, before heading back to Terminal 2 in preparation for catching our flight.

The flight to Manila was a little more turbulent than our flight to Singapore, but otherwise uneventful. Customs at Manila was more a formality than a thorough examination of what we were bringing in to the country, so in short order we were outside the airport, and catching a taxi to the Shalom centre.  This turned out to be an extraordinarily long taxi ride, taking around 1.5 hours to get to the Shalom center.  Traffic was bumper-to-bumper, and in typical Filipino style, appeared to be completely chaotic.  Apparently the traffic was worse than usual, because a film festival had closed one of the major roads.

The Shalom center was quite close to a major shopping centre, Robbinsons. It was there that we bought SIM cards for our phones, had dinner, and admired a pianist, saxophonist and bass guitarist ensemble ripping up some Christmas carols, before heading back for an early night.  We enquired about currency exchange, but unfortunately they were unable to help us.

The next day was Sunday, Christmas day.  This mean that a lot of the shops didn’t open till late.  We had a light breakfast at Starbucks, and by the time we got back, the van that would take us to Uncle Rudi’s place had arrived.

It took a few hours to get to Uncle Rudi’s place, and we arrived just after the afternoon bible study started, so we walked across the rice fields to get to the hall.  It was here that Phil, in his over-confidence about where we were going, managed to walk into a big patch of mud.  He got stuck, and with a bit of help, got out of the mud, minus his shoes.  His shoes were completely encased in mud – he had sunk almost a foot deep in the mud!  So we went back and he changed into some thongs before we tried again.

That night we enjoyed Aunty Leah’s cooking, and stayed up late talking with Dan and Uncle Des, before finally going to bed.  The youth conference was only around 30 minutes away, and we would leave the next morning after breakfast.

After some youtube watching and collecting of various PDFs for use in the Philippines, it was lunch time.  The CDs still hadn’t arrived, so it looked like we would be leaving without them.  But then, during lunch, they arrived! Two massive boxes.  Timon’s suitcase was frantically rearranged to accommodate the 50 CDs – quite a bulky addition.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the way to the airport, but fortunately most of it was heading the other direction. so we arrived in plenty of time.  It turned out we got out of the car at the opposite end of the airport to the Singapore Airlines check-in counters, we had a nice long walk.  There was almost no queue at check-in, so it didn’t take long to get that all sorted, fill out our departure cards (which I had to do twice, due to inadvertently declaring greater than $10k on the first one), and go through customs.

Then we had about two hours to kill, wandering around the duty free shops, looking for headphone adaptors for the aircraft plug, and at prices of various other items available for inflated prices.  Some drinks and food were also consumed while we waited to board the A380 that would take us to Singapore.

The eight hour flight to Singapore was relatively uneventful.  A meal, a snack, various beverage choices, and plenty of movies or tv shows to watch.  I elected mainly to read and sleep – I wasn’t too interested in the selection available.  But it turned out there was an interesting documentary on the Bugatti Veyron, which I watched between Singapore and Manila.

While waiting to disembark and Singapore, we wondered how many people would fit on the plane.  The economy row numbers went up to 62 (we were in row 60 and 61), and at 10 seats wide, that made for a lot of passengers.  So on the way out, Timon asked one of the cabin crew.  He told us around 400, plus first and business. Then he offered to give us a tour of the plane, which we gladly accepted.  We saw the capsule-like seating of first class, and the enormous armchairs that were the seats in business class.

Our first order of business once we got into the airport was to locate the transit hotel.  We had tried to book a room in advance, but were told that it was booked out.  Fortunately there was a cancellation when we inquired, so we booked it until 8am, and went to find something to eat.

While looking for something to eat, we noticed a giant Angry Birds stand in the airport.  It turned out that, with a receipt of greater than $120 SGD and a boarding pass, we could get a free stuffed Angry Birds toy.  Unfortunately they had no pigs left, so we got one of the red birds.

In the morning, after our wake up call, we showered and packed, then searched for a place to have breakfast.  We made enquiries about changing Australian cash into Philippine Pesos, but discovered that we would lose out on the intermediary change to SGD, so we elected not to change any cash there.

Fortunately, other people have gone before me and already solved this problem. I needed a newer version of netatalk (version 2.2.0 at the current time). I found a great guide that gives step-by-step instructions for downloading and compiling the dependencies here.

I had a couple of issues with it though.  Firstly, I had been getting this error message when running the configure script for netatalk before following that guide I linked above:
configure: error: The pkg-config script could not be found or is too old. Make sure it is in your PATH or set the PKG_CONFIG environment variable to the full path to pkg-config.

I thought that the dependencies listed in the guide would solve that issue, especially since they included the download, compile and install of pkg-config.  Alas, the configure script for netatalk was still unable to find pkg-config after installing it.  So I just added an environment variable to the full path as suggested:
export PKG_CONFIG=/usr/local/bin/pkg-config

Finally, when I thought I was done, I restarted netatalk and connected my MBP running Snow Leopard to the NAS, only to be greeted with an unusal message – “Something wrong with the volume’s CNID DB, using temporary CNID DB instead. Check server messages for details!”  Luckily other people have also experienced this error, and it was quickly traced to the /usr/local/etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default file containing the configuration cnidscheme:cdb instead of cnidscheme:dbd for each of my shares.

<QueryList>
<Query Id=”0″ Path=”Security”>
<Select Path=”Security”>* [EventData[Data[@Name='targetusername']=’username’] and  EventData[Data[@Name='LogonType']=’7′] and System[(EventID=4624)]]</Select>
</Query>
</QueryList>

Around 3pm, I got a call from my boss.  A project in Melbourne needed someone with scripting skills, and they needed that person urgently.  Fair enough I thought.  I happily agreed to help them out, without quite realising what I’d gotten myself into.  After speaking with some of the guys involved in the project, I found that my expertise wasn’t quite aligned with their requirements.  We spoke about having a teleconference early Thursday morning, and the possibility was raised that I would have to fly to Melbourne to do the work.

Fast forward another 30 minutes, and the teleconference was happening.  They needed me on a plane first thing Thursday morning, to spend a couple of days in Melbourne.  No, it couldn’t be done remotely, and no, what the client was proposing wasn’t in line with Microsoft’s guidelines for the product, but they wanted it anyway.  And they wanted it right now.

So the next few hours were spent frantically trying to work out how to use the travel approval and booking systems. Oh, and they only accepted Amex to pay for the booking.

Finally, around 6:45, the booking was completed.  I had the email confirmations of my flight and hotel accommodation, and it was time to hurridly pack.  I was on a 7:15 flight, and the checkin had to be done at the airport.

This morning I got my ever-helpful Mother to drive me to the airport, and after endless taxiing, a 20 minute wait for our turn to take off, some slight turbulence, I arrived in Melbourne.  I wasn’t too certain about catching the taxi, but there were plenty of people in the line ahead of me to observe, so I think I managed a convincing performance of someone used to catching taxis.

Finally, I arrived at the hotel shortly before 10am.  One of my co-workers met me, and I left my clothes bag in his hotel room, before heading into the bright and shiny Melbourne office.  I met some more of the team, very friendly guys, and got stuck into it.  Had a quick lunch around 12:30, and then headed off to the client site.

It was located in a historical building, and our destination was in the basement, a room full of computers, presumably waiting to be sent to other locations.  Not exactly the most friendly of environments – definitely a step down from the office I’d just been in.  Still, I hacked away at code all afternoon, and managed to make some reasonable progress, before hitting a snag.

The script I’d been brought in to write was to automate a task.  All well and good, when that task works.  But when it fails to run correctly even in the GUI, and vbscript throws an error message which literally states “Generic Error”, you know you have some problems.  Solving them is tomorrow’s exercise.

Since getting back to the hotel, I’ve wandered around Melbourne CBD, eaten Lamb Souvleki for dinner, follwed with some gelati.  All in all, it’s been an interesting experience, and certainly a welcome difference from my usual daily grind.

The worker process for application pool ‘CitrixWebInterface5.3.0AppPool’ encountered an error ‘Configuration file is not well-formed XML’ trying to read configuration data from file ‘\\?\C:\inetpub\temp\apppools\CitrixWebInterface5.3.0AppPool.config’, line number ’3′.  The data field contains the error code.

After finding the typo (a missing space) and restarting IIS again, everything was fine.

It occurred to me I should install the Citrix Web Interface on the OWA server.  Genius!  But it turned out to not be quite so straightforward.  Because I’m running Exchange 2010, the OWA server was running Windows 2008 R2.  Citrix have only recently released Web Interface 5.3, which supports 2008 R2.

I decided to give it a go.  Firstly I needed to install J# 2.0 Release 2.  Installation of the web interface went smoothly, using the default web site.  OWA and Citrix live in separate folders, which means they would co-exist reasonably well.  Or so I thought.

After creating a citrix web interface site, I attempted to load the page, only to be met with “HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable”.  After some investigation, log reading, head scratching, and google searching, I discovered the answer to my problem.

The pertinent error message was “The Module DLL ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\kerbauth.dll’ could not be loaded due to a configuration problem”.  The answer turned out to involve editing an IIS configuration file, “C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config”.

The line

<add name=”kerbauth” image=”C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\kerbauth.dll” />

needed to be changed to

<add name=”kerbauth” image=”C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\kerbauth.dll” preCondition=”bitness64″ />

I thought that would be enough to resolve the problem, but it wasn’t.  Turns out I had to make the same changes to the lines referring to owaauth.dll and airfilter.dll

Once I’d made those changes, and restarted IIS, everything was fine.  I was greeted with the familiar Carbon-themed interface, and a working web interface installation.  Hooray!

Fortunately, Google’s search division came to the rescue. I came across a blog that described how to use the API in multiple stages. First up, just the map. Then some settings, a marker, and an information window. Perfect. Exactly what I wanted to do, nicely explained and broken down, so someone unfamiliar with the API, and only vaguely familiar with javascript, could understand. Thanks Gabriel Svennerberg!

Lastly, I needed to work out how to put the map into a drupal node. Every example seemed to make use of the onLoad property of the body tag, which obviously wouldn’t do.

My final result was this:

<div id=”map_canvas” style=”width:400px; height:400px”></div>
<meta name=”viewport” content=”initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no” />
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
//map generating code went in here
</script>

These people I’ve been working with the past 3 years are my family. Even though I’ve almost never seen them outside work hours, spending 40 hours a week with these people has turned them into family. Family that I’m going to miss working with. Some of the clients I work with I know well enough to consider extended family in this analogy. I know who to call, and in many cases I’ve called them so many times I don’t even have to look up their phone number.

As I slowly pack up my belongings, it’s like I’m packing up my life. Separating bits of it into boxes, to be stored away for an indeterminate period of time. In less than two weeks, I’ll likely never see these people again. I’ll never again come home to this place I’ve lived the last three years. So many memories that will slowly drift away.

People will fade from reality into the mists of time. I’m going to miss them all – the annoying project managers, the incessant SDMs, the hapless users, the incompetent help desks, the colleagues that range from people to admire, to people that must surely struggle to find their way to work every day. They are the colour in this tapestry of life. A tapestry that will shortly be put away, incomplete, slowly unraveling.

My life has been full of upheaval of recent times, something that’s not going to change in the short term. Moving cities is never easy. Moving cities within 30 days even less so. I’ve never moved all my possessions in such a short time before.

Right now though, that worry awaits my return to Australia. I’ve been in New Zealand since 1st April, firstly for a church youth camp on the book of James, and subsequently for a visit to my sister and her husband. It’s been a nice relaxing time. The weather has varied somewhat, between nice warm sunny days at the start, to cold, cloudy and occasionally rainy days in the middle, and back to warmish sunny days. I’ve caught up with old friends, made some new acquaintances, and become more familiar with Wellington.