The 4wt XP is my favourite rod by far, my preference for fishing small streams with light gear makes this rod the perfect choice for my fishing style. Its a super fast action, the rod loads sweetly and it enables short presentations to close range trout, but the action also enables me to punch the line out quite some distance. I am giving this rod the title of my small to medium/large stream rod.

The SLT is a different rod all together, its action is rated as medium/fast, but in my honest opinion its a very slow action rod. At the moment I cant get used to it, the extreme difference in action to the XP has caused me some grief. It weighs considerably more than the XP (though the XP is a 4wt) and the reason I purchased the rod is to try my hand at fishing for natives, mainly bass and possibly murray cod as the flies used to target these species can be quite large. I need to spend time practicing.

So whats been happening?
Well once again work has taken over my life, next week will be my last week in my current position, happily I am moving into a much more technical role within the company I work for, system integration and validation. I had a taste of the new role earlier on this week and I cant wait to get right into it.

The travel will be reduced to almost a standstill and I will be doing more of what I like doing, that is, hacking away at systems, testing within a controlled environment and providing support.

The O2 Atom dilemma
About six months ago I purchased an O2 Atom pda/mobile phone, originally it was a great peice of equipment, but as time passed it from bad to worse. I kept it updated with the latest software patches which were useless, then the dilemmas started - on a daily basis it would reset itself (sometimes half way through important phone calls) and then about two weeks ago it totally died. Gone, zip, POW, couldnt start the damn thing! Being extremely busy doing work related things I didnt get the chance to make any enquiries to O2 support - so I went back to my trusty old Palm Treo 600 pda/phone, this baby runs like a dream and never lets me down.

Earlier on this week I had a chance to call O2 support and had some instructions sent out to me on how to get the O2 back up and running. If these didnt work I would have to mail the Atom to the O2 service centre - this alone illustrated the lousy O2 service, there is only one O2 warranty/service centre within Australia. From previous experience, without being able to deal face to face with a warranty centre you run a great risk of being dumped with a whopper of a bill in relation to phone issues that are outside 'warranty'. Hey how else are these companies supposed to make post purchase money?

The O2 support personnel emailed some instructions that were basically useless - do a hard reset! I had already done this and countless other things, which was what I explained to the O2 support person, but hey if they instruct me on how to do a hard reset it will probably work! Bullshit.

After spending a short time fiddling about I found that if you hold down the power button, while holding down the camera button and pressing the reset button with your stylus (all at the same time!) you get thrown into a menu where you can recover your ROM. Nifty huh?! I was able to recover the Atom, backup all my data, do a hard reset and start all over again! I wonder how the Atom will fare over the next 6 months!

If your in the market for a PDA/Phone dont even look at the O2 Atom!

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