Smug – the washing machine
The washing machine is going well.
Reading the new Myer catalogue, I thought I could feel smug that I’d paid $200 less than their sale price of $1099, then I noticed that the mob I bought it from has since dropped it by $80. Ah well, still happy with it.
The only question is — should I peel off the energy and water rating labels, or leave them there for prolonged smugness?
What do the rest of you do? Peel them off, or leave them on?
Leave them on only until better ratings are commonplace, perhaps, and the 4 and 4.5 star stuff seems sad and pathetic and wasteful?
South Wharf
DFO has moved from Spencer Street to South Wharf. Oh, well done fellas — a move from an easy-to-get-to spot, to some godforsaken new place which nobody can find.
Apparently they weren’t happy with their high-profile location, being next to a major railway station. For motorists they also had a big car park underneath (though why the government actually allowed a huge inner-city railway station to have a big car park as part of the development, I really don’t know).
So anyway, where exactly is South Wharf? Down on the south side of the river, next to that delightful blight on the landscape, the M1/Montague Street interchange, and a good ten minute walk from the nearest tram stop.
For those driving, why would you bother fighting your way through the inner-city freeway traffic to get to the same old stuff provided at suburban centres?
I haven’t been past to look and see if something’s replaced the ex-DFO site at Spencer Street or if it’s a big empty void. (Update: Commenters report that most of the DFO branding is gone, but the shops themselves are still there.)
But I love the way the DFO map looks, with Essendon somehow being SW of South Wharf, and Moorabbin being out in Gippsland somewhere.
Searching for Google
Google has announced (somewhat early, and amongst other things) the top Australian searches of 2009.
Most popular searches of 2009
YouTube
Hotmail
eBay
MySpace
Yahoo
Gmail
Bebo
Seek
So plenty of people search for Google in Google, despite the idiocy in doing so, and more significantly, the inherent dangers:
Poor Mr Pictogram
Poor pictogram man; he’s obviously in a state of complete despair over the loss of his car. I wonder if he’s based on someone real?
Has anybody compiled a web site of unlucky pictogram people? That’d be a fun project.
Actually maybe he didn’t lose his car. Maybe he just got outbid on the signed copy of the Doug Anthony Allstars book “Book” which I’m selling on Ebay. (Was that plug too subtle?)
The mathematics of school textbooks
It’s all easy in primary school. You send the money in, you get a box of goodies. There’s few textbooks, and almost all are kept at and owned by the school.
It gets more complicated and expensive in secondary school.
So here’s the scenario: Two kids, two years apart. The school has a secondhand book scheme.
At the end of the year, books are sold for two-thirds the retail price, with the seller getting three-quarters of that. So basically for cashing in your books, you get half the money back — assuming you bought them new in the first place.
So with two kids going through, I’m trying to work out if it’s worth selling them through the scheme, or holding onto them unused for a year before using them again.
If you bought $100 of books new at the start of year 1, you’d get $50 back for selling them at the end. If you bought them back again for year 3, it’d cost you $66, and you’d sell them again for $50. Total cost $100 – $50 + $66 – $50 = $66.
If you bought them secondhand originally, the cost is $66 – $50 + $66 – $50 = $32.
If you bought them new, and held onto them until the end of year 3, it’s $100 – $50 = $50.
If you bought them secondhand, and held onto them until the end of year 3, it’s $66 – $50 = $16.
The big unknown here is whether or not the school decides to changes the textbooks along the way, as new editions and better texts are published. If they change them before year 1, you can’t buy them secondhand in the first place, but must buy new. If they change them for year 2, you can’t sell them in the first place. If they change them for year 3, and you held onto them, you have to buy new ones anyway, and you missed your opportunity to sell.
I wonder how fast the turnover is. Perhaps it pays to sit down and be selective, holding onto things which are recent editions.
And just when I thought I’d figured out what to do, my sister mentioned she can get publisher discounts through her work.
…and hello Metro
New uniforms for most staff, and new automated announcements (”Welcome to Metro”) are the only noticeable changes so far. My train was on time, but others were cancelled according to the upgraded Metro web site.
Channels 7, 9 and 10 were all down at Flinders St Station along with The Age Online to interview passengers, and apparently some media saw off the last Connex train to leave FSS last night.
They’ve already announced more platform staff, which may help reduce train dwell times at platforms. Whether bigger changes (such as running this “Metro” like a metro — frequent trains 7-days-a-week) are coming is yet to be determined.
I haven’t jumped on a tram yet to see what’s shaking there. The Yarra Trams web site has had only a few minor changes so far.
What are you seeing out and about?
Update 10:30am: Here’s what the launch circus looked like:
Update 8:30pm: Video from the Herald Sun, and also from The Age:
Farewell Connex
Connex took over running the Caulfield and Northern group lines on 18th April 2004, and to mark the occasion they put up a Welcome to Connex banner at Caulfield station. Evidently from day one, things didn’t go entirely to plan.
Over the past five years they’ve seen the strain of record numbers of passenger trips, with little government investment to help manage it, as well as reliability problems including the Siemens brakes crisis of 2007, the summer failures of 2009, and more than one trying day of disruptions from storms, as happened yesterday afternoon.
And so on Sunday night, we bid them farewell, and once the last Connex service (ironically a bus replacement on the Werribee line) has finished, say hello to Metro on Monday morning.
(And on the trams, it’ll be a switch from TransdevTSL to KeolisDownerEDI Rail, but keeping the Yarra Trams name.)
What will be different? Most staff will have new uniforms. Sounds like all the automated announcements will be quickly changed, and Connex logos may disappear under temporary stickers, before being properly replaced over the coming months.
But the timetables will be the same. The trains, stations, track and signals will all be the same, save one train fully decked-out in the new colours. They’ve got some reliability targets, and say they’ll staff some more stations, but other than that there’s not a lot of detail yet.
Over time I guess we’ll see more changes. Metro won’t be able to perform miracles with the fleet and infrastructure, as that’s the government’s responsibility, but there is scope to keep enhancing maintenance practices, disruption and incident handling, cleanliness, customer information, and various other operational stuff.
Hopefully they’re up to the task. Good luck Metro!
PS. The Sheena Easton Connex advert from 2004:
My video of a day on the trains, from the final months of Connex Melbourne’s operation:
Update: Something of a farewell present — Connex is paying compensation to monthly and longer ticketholders for October and November due to late-running.
Hey you! Daniel!
American Express have this advertising campaign going on. Every time I open a newspaper or pass an Amex billboard, I do a double-take.
Perhaps this isn’t happening to people who are not called Daniel.
Please note: This Daniel does not recommend or endorse American Express products. They’d have to pay me first.
