Friday 4 September 2009

275 West Porto Drive, The Pearl

We are now residents of The Pearl and enjoying all it has to offer. Master bedroom, living room, dining room and kitchen have been furnished.

Guest bedroom and nursery are next on the list. Oh yeah, and the most important place, the balcony! If only I could figure out how to get muskoka chairs here .... that would be pretty sweet. That and margarita mix.

Here's what I now know about the pearl through rumour or what not. Each unit across the entire complex receives a 1 gigabit feed. The gigabit feed provides IPTV (digital television), VoiP (telephone) and internet.

IPTV is provided through a software service called Minerva. If only I could figure out how to get VLC to connect to the Minerva service, that would be mint. Each unit is only provided 1 Scientific Atlanta IPTV decoder for the television. This kinda sucks when you have a 3 bedroom place and a pregnant wife that may want to relax in bed one day and watch tv....

Work is going well. The main goal I wanted was to re-expose myself to technology. After being specialized for the past few years ... it's nice to reach out again.

Ah! I almost forgot. In Switzerland I bought an HP C7280 printer. It's nice, can print photos, scan, all the fancy shmancy stuff. So ... it's out of ink. Lucy is a printer freak. No idea what she prints but she goes through ink very very quickly.... Went to the "best" computer store here in Doha the other night to buy more ink. I brought the little HP ink card with me saying that the cartridges I need to buy are "363" ....

No one in doha carries this .... after speaking to people and looking at their compatibility guide it soon became clear that if the technology was manufactured after 2007 (for printers....) then it doesn't exist in this country ....! So, Aramex to the rescue again....