Category Archives: Life

Personal Information, Over Disclosure & Security

January 18, 2010General, LifeAlistair Lattimore

These days too many businesses that we interact with on a daily basis require far too much personal information about each and every one of us. A prime example of this is signing up for a non-essential service at a shopping centre or local shop – some of those businesses require a comparable amount of information to that of a bank. Why do they need all that information?

I recently signed up at our local video store in Upper Coomera on the Gold Coast and they required a credit card or debit card, without one they simply wouldn’t sign you up for an account. I appreciate that they probably have issues getting money from clients who return videos late, however I’m not convinced that providing my credit card information is a reasonable measure and I’ll tell you why.

Every time I see someone pick up a pen and write down my personal information, especially if they aren’t an organisation who’s business is managing personal information, it worries me. Everytime a EFTPOS terminal is down and they take a manual imprint of a credit card, it worries me. In the case of the Upper Coomera video shop, the staff member wrote my credit card information down on a signup form – but once they’ve entered my information into the computer – what happens with that piece of paper? Is it simply scrunched up and put in the waste paper basket, burned, shredded or none of the above. What about once it is entered into the computer, is it encrypted or stored unencrypted for anyone to see. Can any staff member at the video store view my personal information, including my complete set of credit card details? Is the business and their staff adequately equipped and trained to handle that sort of sensitive information?

In my opinion, these are all good questions that the average person never thinks about. They assume that our personal information is handled with care, that businesses have reliable processes in place to minimise the potential risk of having their clients information disclosed or compromised.

These sorts of issues are being raised more and more frequently in the mainstream media, fueled by the unchecked rise in personal information and identity theft taking place. Getting this ugly secret out into the open is the only way to deal with it – people need to be made aware of it and what sort of measures they can put in place to reduce the likelihood of their information getting out into the wild.

The sad thing is, that while I read their terms of service and I know they are bound by the Australian Privacy Act – I still signed up for an account at my local Gold Coast video store. I pressed them to sign me up without that information but they wouldn’t budge and the alternative was a Video Ezy at Helensvale – a 15 minute drive away, hardly convenient.

If you take anything away from this, let it be an increased awareness of what and how often you disclose your personal information and to what types of people, organisations or companies.

29th Birthday

December 30, 2009Family, LifeAlistair Lattimore

It is that time of the year again, I’m now officially 29 years of age!

I woke up this morning slightly bleary eyed to Claire and Hugo wishing me a happy birthday which is fantastic. Being some what of a present fanatic, Claire thought I should open a present immediately and I obliged and received the following completely kick arse gifts:

A medium sized box of Ferrero Rocher. After the walloping I took over Christmas with great food and fantastic sweet treats, I couldn’t have possibly managed a massive box again like last year.
Two recent framed photos of Hugo to put on my desk at work, which I love dearly – he is a handsome little man.
A Nintendo Wii with the Wii Sports game and a second Wii Remote. This was a joint venture between Claire’s family and it was completely unexpected – I would have been more than happy with the first two presents.

We set about our morning routine with Hugo and we had pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast. Once that was done, I had to open the Nintendo Wii box, to make sure everything was in order of course. I was impressed with the neat boxing of the components and now easy it was to setup. More importantly, it worked but that took a couple of hours to verify!

As is the tradition, we went to Hogs Breath for lunch which is located on the Gold Coast spit beside Marina Mirage. When I booked, the lady at Hogs Breath mentioned that there was a lot of traffic around today – fantastic to know. I flicked off an SMS to everyone and we were soon on our way. To our surprise, as soon as we got to the M1 overpass at Upper Coomera we could see that all south bound lanes on the M1 were nose to tail and moving very slowly. We later heard on the radio that a car had burst into flames on the motorway and emergency services were on the scene – sure fire way to stop a major arterial if there ever was one.

To get around the huge backlog of traffic, we slipped along the service road and onto Hope Island Road. Fortunately the road was clear but a much slower driving speed as it isn’t a highway. After suffering through a moderate amount of heavy traffic coming through Southport, we managed to make it to Hogs Breath about 20 minutes late.

Andrew and Belinda travelled from Ipswich for lunch, braving the horrific traffic which was great and as a present said they’d help pay for a replacement graphics card since mine finally broke recently. Brendan rode in on his new Kawasaki Ninja, he of course didn’t have to suffer the traffic but he did play on my love of coffee and gave me a couple bags of chocolate coated coffee beans! Kylie, Brett, Hollie, Blake and Summer also joined me for lunch, Blake napped most of the time but Summer was full of beans – she is gorgeous.

Arriving home, Lucy was here waiting for us – which was a little senendipitous as we hadn’t arranged it at all but she arrived only minutes before we got home. Following on from the Nintendo Wii theme, Lucy and Michael gave me WWE Smackdown Vs Raw – which is an American wrestling game for those who don’t follow it. I had a quick game of it but got completely hammered, wasn’t as easy to pick up as tennis or boxing!

I’ve had a great 29th birthday and I’d just like to thank everyone who travelled to the Gold Coast, phoned, SMS’d, instant messaged, emailed and offered well wishes for my birthday. I can say that I have been absolutely spoiled rotten – thank you to everyone for the great presents.

Next year I’ll be knocking on the door of the big three zero!

Improper Right Turn

October 26, 2009LifeAlistair Lattimore

The Gold Coast is still recovering from the SuperGP that was held last week and over the weekend. As a result of the racing carnival being on the Gold Coast, there are serious road closures as a result.

Last week as a by product of the closures, there was a significant amount of pressure put on roads that don’t normally cater for that volume of traffic and there was some very slow and long drives home – one of which took me nearly one and a half hours.

On the way home from work yesterday, I pulled out of the Circle on Cavill car park and was about to head south and suffer through the traffic again and then noticed a bit of an opportunity. Just before I pulled out onto Ferny Avenue, I noticed that the traffic was on red lights at Ferny Avenue and Beach Road and either a police officer on the ground or red lights was holding the traffic on Thomas Drive heading into Chevron Island.

The opportunity I speak of, was a not quite so legal right turn or legally speaking an improper right turn. If you view the intersection of Cavill Avenue & Ferny Avenue in Google Street View, you’ll see it is marked turn left only but directly in front there is a nice big break in the traffic island.

Opportunistically, given the traffic was held at both lights and there was literally not a single car in sight – I nipped through the break in the traffic island to head north on Ferny Avenue. Of course, this all ended in tears and a traffic violation when, as soon as I pulled out, a Gold Coast Highway Patrol car exited the pick up and drop off area for Mantra Circle on Cavill.

There is a lesson in all of this though, the law is always watching or at least watching Surfers Paradise the week after the Gold Coast SuperGP!

rediATM Follows The Crowd & Raises ATM Fees

October 5, 2009LifeAlistair Lattimore

At the start of September I applauded rediATM for being, what I considered front runners, by not following the crowd and issuing a $2.00 fee to customers using their ATM network throughout Australia. You can imagine my disappointment when only a month later, I used the rediATM in front of Woolworths at the Upper Coomera City Centre and I was charged $2.00 for my time.

I have no idea what it costs rediATM to provide their ATM network throughout Australia, however I get the impression that it has absolutely no bearing on the $2.00 fee they charge. It isn’t an coincidence that nearly every ATM provider charges $2.00 for the service – it is a small amount of money that consumers hate having to pay but tolerate because it seems as though it is an inconsequential amount of money. This is the how the banks make literally hundreds of millions of dollars annually, charging lots of small fees which seem innocuous on their own, collectively annoying but still small enough that it begrudgingly dismissed.

For no other reason than I had a good feeling about rediATM until now, I would have used their ATM in front of Woolworths and ‘happily’ copped the existing $1.75 on the chin but felt good about it because they weren’t being a lemming.

Now that rediATM have increased their ATM to $2.00 like everyone else, I’ll make a point of not using it and get money out when purchasing at Woolworths.

Kingscliff Short Break

September 10, 2009Life, Photos, TravelAlistair Lattimore

Claire, Hugo and I recently had a weekend escape to Kingscliff on the Tweed Coast in Northern New South Wales. It takes between 30 and 40 minutes to get to Salt Village from the Gold Coast. Claire and I had been to Salt Village outside Kingscliff previously, however it’d been quite some time ago. We figured we could find our way there by nose, which mostly worked but we weren’t sure which road to take out of Kingscliff to get back to Salt Village.

We were booked into stay at Mantra on Salt Beach, one of three accommodation options available at Salt Village – the other two being Peppers Salt Resort & Spa and Peppers Bale Salt. When we arrived at the reception, we were also greeted by a friendly porter. I don’t recall a porter when we stayed at Peppers Salt Resort & Spa last time, however it was great to have one available at Mantra on Salt Beach on this stay. The best thing was he took care of the luggage, which meant it was no hassle for Claire & Hugo. The other benefit I liked was he was able to direct me where to park in the secure underground car park to be close to the lifts that were servicing the section of Mantra on Salt Beach we’d be staying in – nothing worst than going up a lift into the wrong section of a building.

The room we had booked was a two bedroom ocean view apartment and we’d requested a portable cot for Hugo to sleep in as well. I was happy to find out when we arrived that the cot was already set up and it even came with a complete set of toiletries and linen – not bad for a little fella! It was setup in the master bedroom but Claire and I thought we’d move it into the second room. That proved a little harder than first thought as it didn’t fit through the doorways easily and I couldn’t manage to unpack it. A call to the reception and another staff member came up, unpacked, moved and set it up again in the other room in about 2 minutes flat – very efficient!

Hugo had his first real encounter with the beach, which was fantastic to watch unfold. Claire took Hugo down to the water to let the small waves roll over his legs and feet, which he took delight in – kicking and stamping in the water. It would have been great if the beach water wasn’t quite so cool, I think he would have really enjoyed the waves. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do in all the sand, so we put him down onto the firm sand to start with – which went without a hiccup and proceeded to move him into the soft, loose sand. He was fascinated by it, waving his hands furiously over the sand, hitting and knocking it everywhere and had an all round great time. After he had finished playing with the sand, he realised there was a big blue thing in front of him and took off towards it!

When Claire and I stayed at Peppers Salt Resort & Spa last time, we ventured into Kingscliff to have a mooch around and were happy to discover some great cafes and shops. The cafe we remembered had changed hands in that time, I tried a barramundi burger but I now realise that the error of my ways and will remember not to betray the beef gods next time. One shop we were excited to see was still operating was Boardwalk Books, a small book shop with good mix of mainstream reading and a fabulous range of eclectic books that you don’t see in other book shops. We couldn’t help ourselves and picked up a children’s book named Everybody Poos and a book by Ben Mezrich named Bringing Down The House – the true story behind the recent “21” movie featuring Kevin Spacey.

You can’t help but fall in love with Kingscliff, its small, quaint and is absolute beachside living. I think the Kingscliff Beach & Lawn Bowls Club must have the single greatest location of any bowls club in Australia – their backyard is the pristine Kingscliff beach. I imagine Kingscliff now is what the Gold Coast must have felt like back when it was still a tiny town growing up. Salt Village is also a really relaxing place to be, with the majority of the shops you’ll need to simply remove yourself from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to unwind.

I don’t know when we’ll be back to Kingscliff & Salt Village again next but I’m quite sure I’m going to enjoy it.