Update on the cable: Optus initially said “Well, we don’t prune bushes”, but after hearing the whole story (especially the bit where it’s at risk of damaging lots of their equipment if it comes tumbling down) have been convinced to come and get their cable. They say they’ll be out on Thursday morning to take it away.

This week the ultimate contest begins. Yes, it’s footy tipping time again. It’s been some years since I entered a footy tipping competition — in fact it was the first and only one I have ever properly participated in. I knew as much about football then as I do now — almost nothing beyond the team names and colours. My tipping method was a mix of reading the footy columns in Friday’s paper, random guesses and a good deal of cynicism about how my own team would do.

And I won it.

Not sure how, but I did. This year, I’m entering two separate competitions — the work one (which has several dozen entrants) and another run by a friend. The work one involves money, the friends one involves a most impressive perpetual trophy. (And the glory of it all — which is probably more prized than the trophy.)

So, the challenge is on, and just maybe I’ll relive those glory days of 1999.

In my front garden next to the verandah is a humungous bush, featuring bright purple leaves flowers and green branches with soft thorns. It’s growing, Triffid-like, out of control, and I regularly have to take the hedge clippers to it to prevent its spread blocking (or at least making awkward) access to the front door. It’s a good method of stress relief actually. Hack! Hack! Hack!

Attached to the verandah is a cable which goes through the top middle of the bush, up to a power pole out on the street. It appears to me (and to a Telstra bloke who knocked on the door last week to ask something) to be an OptusVision cable, perhaps a remnant of a previous tenant’s penchant for paying lots of money for dozens of channels but still nothing to watch. The only other visible cable to the street seems to be the power, which is thankfully a good deal higher, out of reach of the bush.

As the bush has grown over the months, its grip on the OptusVision cable has started to drag it down. At its lowest point it’s only about 2 metres off the ground, and I’m guessing that sooner or later, the bush’s pull on it will eventually either cause it to snap or break the connection at one end of the other.

I had a closer look at the bush yesterday, while I was trimming it back a tad. The cable goes through a very dense part of it, and I’m guessing major tree surgery would have to be performed to ease the pressure on the cable. Obviously since it’s for a service I don’t use, my care factor is a long way below 100%. But if and when the cable succumbs, it could cause problems, so I wonder on whose shoulders responsibility rests: the tenant, the agent or owner, or Optus?

There were two more Telstra blokes skulking about in the street when I got home tonight. We had a little conference and the three of us were in consensus: I should ring OptusVision and ask them to confirm that it’s their cable. And to see if their care factor is any higher than mine.

Navigating to a party on Saturday night (with a woman who can read maps! A good reason — not that another one was needed — to hold onto her!) it became apparent from looking at the Melway that the street in question

• has three names over its 6 kilometre length
• over the stretch we traversed, has only one name, but at one point the street numbers start over again
• and the odds and evens switch sides
• and the highs and lows switch directions too

Conclusive proof, I think, that town planners are evil sadistic bastards.

Amazingly, we got there with only one wrong turn. And that was only because the street sign was too tiny to read while zooming past the turn.

Years ago, I occasionally shopped at Rod Irving Electronics in A’Beckett Street. There was a shop assistant in there who looked like Darrin from Bewitched. The first, original Darrin, with the ears that stuck out. Apart from the ears, he had slicked back jet black hair, a dark suit and very shiny shoes. I don’t know if he was a bit strange or something, but I distinctly going in there one day and asking for something. He acknowledged my request, and appeared to ask a colleague to fetch it for him. I waited, and he carried on standing by the counter, waiting too. I looked around at something else as I waited.

After a minute or two, he came up to me again and asked me if I was being served. Weird. I said I thought he was already serving me, and when I got just a blank stare, I asked him again for whatever it was (something geeky and early 90s no doubt — maybe a copy of MS DOS 6 or something), and eventually procured it and fled. From that day, I avoided him when I went in there again, and the shop finally shut down in the late 90s, probably due to all the custom he lost for them.

This morning I got on the train to go to work. Only a very few seats left, and they were all in the awkward to get to spots in the corners, where you’d feel hemmed in by another person sitting next to you, so I decided to stand and read my newspaper. I aimed for a spot with relatively few people standing, and space to grab a handle and open the paper. Some guy in a longitudinal seat was resting back, his legs fully spread out across the train. As I went past I half stepped over his legs and half accidently-on-purpose bumped one with one foot. After all, if you’re one of the lucky half who have got a seat, at least you could do is make some space for the poor slobs like me who have to stand. Rude bastard.

I got to my spot and stood and read the paper, half-wishing someone would open a window, though the need was not desperate, so I didn’t ask anybody. After a couple of minutes I looked back at my laid back friend. Still laid back, feet almost across to the opposite seats.

The train rolled on. Read, travel, read, travel, read. A stop or two later I looked back again. Feet still there. In their shiny shoes. I glance across the carriage to the bloke attached to the feet. It was Darrin, looking not a day older, not in a suit but in trousers and a shirt. Shiny shoes, ears still sticking out, jet black hair still slicked back, and a bored expression.

As the train filled up, his shoes retreated. When we got to my stop, I got off the train and fled.

An update about my colleague who lost his laptop computer on Friday the 13th last month. A couple of weeks later he was playing with his kids in the front yard when a male youth walked past on the footpath. With a laptop under his arm. Colleague recognised the laptop, ran after him and rugby tackled him on the nature strip (or so the story goes. Maybe he just shouted out “Oi!”). Youth claimed he had bought it in the pub. Yup. A likely story. The laptop was recovered, and Colleague took it back into work and got the local geeks to look it over.

So they checked it on the asset register. And it didn’t match. Different serial numbers. Uh oh… had he beaten up the wrong kid and got the wrong laptop back? As it turns out there was something askew on the register, and it was eventually positively identified as being the correct laptop. Problem now is it’s no longer covered by the insurance (since they had been told it was stolen, and the replacement had arrived) so now it’s in laptop limbo.

The OFLC got back to me after I queried the G rating of Doctor Who: The Two Doctors, saying that: In the Board’s view, the material is suitable for general viewing as the incidences of violence are so theatrical and unrealistic in this low budget science-fiction context as to be minimal in their impact. Can’t say I agree with them when it comes to the stabbing scene, but there you go. Nice of them to reply, anyway, and not a hint of “go away, you crank”.

Geek joy: That moment when you realise that the tweaking you’ve done of the program has been successful, and though the code is a tad more confusing now (quite possibly in a way that nobody else will ever understand, no matter how well-documented it is), but all the effort was worth it because it takes about a hundredth of the time to run.

Had a company sponsored flu shot yesterday. Obviously they want to remove the most likely reason for taking a sickie this winter. Even us lowly contractors, normally shunned when it comes to corporate benefits, were included. The medicos took over a meeting room for a few hours to administer said shot to everybody who wanted it, thus allowing those of us sitting nearby to marvel at the liberalism of the corporation for allowing a safe injecting room on the premises. Best of all the flu shot showbag included mints, M&Ms, Ovalteenies, tissues (you’d think we’d be less in need of them now) and some Dilmah teabags (certainly a step up from the usual ones in the kitchen).

(To recap: Last year the flat I was renting was sold to developers. They kicked everybody out; debated about how much notice they’d given; their builders made a nuisance of themselves; my eventual move went well (Nando’s aside); the flats were renovated and put on market again).

Noted with some amusement the other day that the now-renovated flats are still for sale. A new sign proclaims something along the lines of “Huge success! 50% sold!” Oh great. That’s 3 out of 6 sold. Doesn’t sound that impressive when you put it that way, does it. It’s coming up on a year since the developers bought the block, so given how awkward their builders sometimes made it while living there, it’s somewhat satisfying to know they still have a whole buncha capital stuck in it.

The zip on one of my favourite pairs of Levis self-destructed the other week, so time to buy a new pair.

Something I learnt working in the menswear shop during my high school and uni years was that there are an inordinate number of ways of measuring the size of a pair of trousers. There’s imperial (eg in those days I was a 32 inch waist), metric (81cm), clothing sizes (S - short for Small, as in Small, Medium, Large, Extra-large…) or the numeric size system (14), or some arcane system whose origins I have no idea about, which defined this size as 4, but also features weird nonsensical sizes like 7 1/4.

Levis have actually switched (even on their jeans made in Australia and sold locally) from metric to imperial. Maybe they think it gives them some kind of cool American chic.

Today, I’m roughly an 86cm waist, or 34 inches. Or M, 16 or 5. Easy, huh. So I’m gradually expanding, though being this size, I don’t believe I’m fat, and it hasn’t changed in quite a few years.

I was interested to read one bloke’s weightloss experiences on melb.general recently: he lost 35kg in 6 months. If I lost 35kg, I’d be wasting away, very unhealthy, but I was curious to see how many of the methods he used that I would be willing to adopt if I had to lose weight.

The full post is here. The main points are below, and before anybody I know reads this and wonders if it’s some kind of hint directed at them — it’s not, okay? I just found it interesting.

1. Low fat everything. If there is no low fat equivalent, you can’t eat it. If it has more than 10% fat, it’s gone. … If you must eat out steer everyone to Japanese, where generally sushi/sashimi is as about as lean as you can get.

Since I’m not exactly the world’s most accomplished cook, I do like my meals out. Japanese is okay every once in a while, though I’m not exactly superkeen on sushi, and there’s plenty of other genres of restaurant I like to patronise. Variety is the spice of life, you know.

And some foods simply don’t have a low fat equivalent. The super-tasty ones, principally. I also wonder if low fat necessarily means healthy.

2. Low sugar everything. Pure glucose is an enemy. It provides no nutrition and only kJ. All soft drinks, sweets etc bye bye. Articial sweetners are your friend if you are like me and need sweet fizzy stuff.

Can’t quite get there. I don’t generally have softdrinks (just the occasional Coke), but I do love my chocolate, and I’m afraid the low fat versions don’t really cut it for me.

One thing I may have to give up is Vegemite in a Biskit. Such a miraculous taste in a biscuit, but according to an article in the Sunday Age a few days ago they’re loaded up with just about every additive imaginable, and the nutritionist interviewed panned it comprehensively, saying he wouldn’t give it to anyone. Damn. I suppose I’ll just have to substitute it with… Vegemite on a biscuit.

Then there is the temptation of the Freddos, Caramello Koalas, and the M&M dispenser at work. All funds to charity, which makes them good, right? Right?

3. Breakfast is a must. If you skip breakfast 100,000 years of genetics kicks in and your body goes “uga boga I’m a caveman and I haven’t eaten after sleeping, that means I must slow my metabolism down and hang on to my fat cells until I can kill my next woolly mammoth”.

Apart from the historic bending of facts, no problems there: I eat breakfast pretty much every day, usually cereal and fruit, no sugar, all good stuff.

4. Control your carbs post lunch — big carbo loaded meals for a dinner are a no no. For dinner I never had pasta, rice, potato etc. All you do is energize your body up for exercise which is not coming. You have your meal of lean meat and green vegies.

No way. I love my pasta dinners! I love my Spag Bog! And my mashed potato. And rice, dammit. Well, okay, not all three in the one meal, but at least one of the three invariably features in my dinners.

It’s good that it worked for this guy, that he was able to find his own weight loss solution. I suppose that’s what everyone is looking for. I’m glad I don’t have to be so strict with my diet. I think I get a reasonable amount of exercise and probably eat healthily enough to get by. Hopefully maybe.

Ooh. Hungry now. Need a snack…

Tonight

in my garden

in the tree

at the back

THERE ARE BATS!

Probably disenfranchised former Botanic Gardens dwelling flying foxes.

I had been wondering about those things swooping overhead as I put the washing on the line tonight. They didn’t seem like birds. And I knew they weren’t when they started calling to each other.

How inestimably cool.